the ephemerality of my world is damning;
each tree i see,
each person i pass,
each streetlamp humming softly against the dark,
seems to exist only through my eyes.

i’ve watched the wind comb through a stranger’s hair,
the way light scatters their pupils when they turn,
and how those pupils dilate, fixated on the one they love.
i’ve watched trees sway, leaves rustling in the wind,
families in their shade
unaware the light will fail with me.

and then there’s the curious case of you—
your green eyes would sparkle in the middle of may,
and your long, jet black hair made me thankful for dreaming of breezes.
your smile, radiant as the light i’d chase every day
reminding me how the day outruns the sun.

for the first time, i’d wished i wasn’t a dreamer,
that my world wasn’t spun from my own mind.
i wished and hoped and begged for your own autonomy,
that you weren’t as destined to flicker out
as the streetlamps that pop and darken when i close my eyes.

do you dream?
do you spin your own narrative,
envisage the same lovers and oak trees as i do?
do you fall asleep at night,
watching your world deteriorate to a fleeting memory?

perhaps we may both be architects of our own desires,
building each other from scraps of longing,
tending to our own streetlamps as we would sunrises,
each one a fragile ember in the wind.

but, even still, i thank whatever divine entity
blessed me with an imagination that cradled you—
if my mind made you
it was my first act of kindness to myself,
my universal defiance of all i’ve known.

if my mind painted you
in a way no artist could replicate;
if my mind crafted your name
such that even gods feared breaking it,
i’d promise to never sleep again.

i’d never watch the streetlights die;
i’d never let the evergreen fade beneath the rising moon;
i’d never take the gift of your being away from either of us.

so here i sit,
in my imagination, both the prisoner and jailer,
telling myself, as the last streetlamp hums overhead

“just one more minute.”