Alone in the Ether

a sestina. my longest poem to date.

Burn me on the pyre for my sins. There wouldn’t be a single fleck of ash that could ever

forget the glowing hum of being close to you. Do you think of me?

Of that divine space our entwined bodies occupied in the universe? If the answer is no, don’t say it.

I would carry that singular word, your denial, for an eternity, pillar pressing gravely on my back,

Atlas cursed with the weight of your absence. Please just give me the next three minutes, the next

ten. I don’t need very long, just a few moments to look at you, to be near you

---

one last time. Amidst your buttercup yellow sheets, I showed my devotion to you

with my tongue between your legs and my fingers in your mouth. I’ve never

forgotten the taste of your desperation, feeling your heart beating against mine, your next

breath sipped straight from my lips. I don’t care if it’s a lie, say you love me

anyways, with that secret smile on your face and fingers crossed behind your back.

I promise to pretend I don’t see. Whatever you need me to mold myself into, I will sculpt it

---

with care and pale clay. You were always plucking that string, the thread binding us together, playing it

like a harp. I still feel it. It’s there, in the twitching of my fingers, searching for the shape of you

that I lost in the ether years ago. In your old shirts I never returned to you, tucked in the back

of my dresser drawer. In your mother’s coconut curry recipe I still faithfully prepare whenever

I have company in the house that you have never seen, that you will never share with me—

the house where I dream of you and wake up hoping to find you in bed next

---

to me, but all that’s there is the forgotten sound of your voice. Better luck next

time. The bathroom mirror reflects tired eyes. I sometimes wonder if I’m going mad, that I imagined it,

you having once been mine. I think of you most in flashes of light, evading me

in the faults of my periphery. I reach towards the flickers, yet I’ve never managed to catch you.

But it must have been real once, even if we were just two dancers performing for no one. If you ever

wish to dance again, know I’ll be waiting behind the curtain for the pas de deux, back

---

in alignment, arms open to yours. At night, I feel the numbing of my limbs as I lie on my back,

praying you can’t hear my thoughts across the vast, unyielding Atlantic as you wake next

to him. I stare at the ceiling fan, blades cutting through stale air, thanking foreign gods that you never

stopped living like I have, constantly straining under the pressure of breathing. It

hangs around me, grief I can’t outrun, a cloud the shape of a mountain. Our time ran out and you

never had to suffer in the trail of burning earth that now follows me.

---

Come home to me. I can take care of you now, or I will die trying. Trust me

even if I haven’t proven that I’ve earned it. I know I can’t go back

to fix what I’ve broken, but I’ll hold our pieces, even when they cut me. Won’t you

look at me? Look at me. Think about what you say next

and, please, consider that if you just do not say it,

we can resolve ourselves to standing here forever.

---

We don’t have to speak, just stay next to me

or turn away and I’ll be forever content watching your back.

I will haunt you.

Promise it.