how u were like the sun

2

The oranges and yellows were all around us but not from the sun; it was now the trees. They were changing colors.

You were changing colors too. School had started and we both knew that it would be so hard to see one another, but we could make it work, we had to.

You would drive by ‪around midnight‬, when I should have been getting my sleep for the big pre-calc test I was so nervous about; but instead I was kissing your lips. Kissing them and kissing them because I missed you so much. There was no time for words. Kisses, I thought, were a better way of showing what I felt and you thought so too.
I think.
I'd don't know for sure, I had never asked.

There was no space for words, our bodies were just too close.

I would ask you to text me when you could and tell you that I will try harder to see you this weekend, but we both knew that there was just so much in the way.

You hardly stopped by in October and I felt so lonely, my nose was drippy and my eyes were blurry. It was like watching a sad movie with beautiful scenery; I happened to love autumn.

I was smoking so much pot because I remember you having a joint in your back pocket or in your car all summer and I was getting so sick, it was fucking with my immune system. But all in all it was just to have a piece of you inside of me.
And when my mother asked why it seemed as if I had been crying, I would be so grateful to have an excuse; and say that I was just sick. Mom, I'm sick, that's all, I'm okay.

The leaves were falling off the trees just as our communication was falling off too. You hardly made time for me and yet I was trying to push Friday and Monday farther apart so I could create some day where you and I could see each other. But you were blowing me off and you continued to do so and that just felt colder than the autumn breezes.

I wanted you with me, whispering stuff in my ear, urging me to stop smoking so much cause you were now here, listening to me rant about how my friends complained about how they don't see me as often—I wanted to remain available for you.

And then you did come by and when you did, I was so shocked at how your pretty lips could now say the ugliest things. You were saying that I never made time for you, that I was perhaps seeing someone else, that I hardly kissed you anymore, that I was creating this distance that I complained so much about. And you were saying that it was like we weren't even a couple, we might as well just end it, end it right here.
Because it was more simple to just let it end, to let autumn end than to fight for something that was so close to warmth, to just accept that winter was coming, shorter days, less chances.

You always seemed to seek the most simple solution.

But I didn't want that. I was being foolish; fighting against the seasons, fighting the change.
So I kissed you and it was like touching the sun again. Oh man, I'd missed the sun.
I could hardly stop myself, I had been so cold. I needed your warmth.

All over me.
Inside me.

And you moaned my name and I squeezed my eyes in pain even though we were doing such a beautiful thing, we were becoming one.
You and I became a they, a them, an us.

Artwork by Helen Frankenthaler: Summerscene, Provincetown circa 1961