It was the first day of Spring that had felt like Summer.

And it was a white mantel, adorned with white candles, whose flames reflected off the lukewarm water that had inundated my white gown.

The sun.

He had beaten down on my face that morning,

Mourning,

In reprimand of my defial.

And I can imagine you in your black tennis shoes, sitting on the window ledge, looking at the constellations enveloped in a black sky.

Your abuela had painted the solar system on the ceiling of your childhood bedroom.

And the moon rose; she comforted you while the sun slipped behind the horizon.

Your solace was in the night sky.

And it was my pasty hands, the ones you’d come to know all too well, that gripped a white cross around my neck.

And if I had realized we were looking at the same moon that night,

Maybe it would have all been worth it.

I told you I was afraid of the dark; you told me it was because I hadn’t taken the time to know her well enough.

“There’s beauty in the things unknown.”

I didn’t think much of that.

But your charcoal colored hair that dusted over your deep green eyes, the dark shadows casted from your cheek bones - When I met you I was no longer afraid of the dark.

I was in love with it.

We sat in the back of empty movie theaters, shadowed coffee shops.

And if it wasn’t for how your dark eyelashes flickered while you slept,

I would’ve remembered the white mantel, adorned with white candles, whose flames reflected off the water that had inundated my white gown.

And I can’t imagine having to close your lips to say a loving word, to close the gates of your own endearment.

That every time you would part your lips to kiss him you would be kissing a paradox.

Boyfriend rolls differently off the tongue.

None the matter, I had already memorized how your lips curled when you smiled.

July 11, 3:06 a.m.

Sappho fell over the ledge of the Leucadian cliffs in longing for a man,

But you told me the sun had pushed her off instead.

The same flame of the white candle.

The same flame that struck me that morning,

Mourning.

We lay amongst the constellations, enveloped in the night sky.

We’re looking at the same moon tonight.

And it had all been worth it.