all five fingers reached out
grasping to understand the five elements
that make up everything we know
to satisfy a thirst for knowledge

and all five senses were on highest intensity
we lived in screaming color and vibrancy

because all five years, all sixty months
every second, every sixty seconds
felt like hours upon hours
you made me feel infinite
with you, i finally learned how to
discover an always within just one
of sixty heartbeats in sixty seconds

we shone brighter than
the five pointed stars
twinkling in the sky
like freckles on the
serene face of night

and we never needed any metric fifths
we were drunk enough on
our love for each other
bleeding crimson, staining clothes

we were both fives
but together, we were a perfect ten
the story of our love
written in iambic pentameter
lasted as long as a transient
midsummer night’s dream

and now, we are in love
has become we loved
but that five-lettered past tense
somehow seems even more beautiful
because sometimes, things deceased
can be even more breathtaking
just like the five wilted petals
of wrinkled buttercups
you gave me for our fifth
valentine’s day together
sitting on my dresser
in a vase of crystalline glass

the fifth month of an ever changing year
when we met and when we ended
near saks fifth avenue at 5 o’clock
in the rustic coffeehouse we went to
on the morning of our fifth date
is a signal of both
happiness and sadness
gratitude and regret
and forever and never
condensed into a singularity
of all my fading memories
of the mesmerizingly
momentary us