This Poem Cannot Be About You Poem by Maya Hanson

when you left at two a.m.
i didn't want to go to sleep
so now i am sitting here
with a roomful of regrets
wishing i could have followed you down that hallway,
nothing would waste my time so well
as climbing into bed with you.

i follow you so close behind
when you bring these things out of me i've never said before
and i'm caring now about how i define
my kind of paradise.

i want to touch you till we're burning
i want to touch you and still stay as innocent as you used to think i was.

you know how i drink the sky when it's made of gray
like i will never be thirsty again.
you know how the darkness tastes,
you know how beautiful a hand to hold looks in that darkness
when i run away from everything else.

wrap our fingers
like they're fighting or embracing, tell me
we do not even need contact and still
we power the whole city.

but this poem cannot be about you,
there is so much already trying to end us,
an army racing over the hill-
intertwine your legs with mine, tell me
our own hands will not join that army.

maybe next time
i will follow you down that hallway after midnight.
i doubt it.

everyone is born with an angel in our rearview
and a bitter taste in our mouths.
everyone is born with a line to say,
we are two parts heavy and one part here.