I will walk underneath trees with white blossoms
that seem to cascade in slow motion, like the years that drifted
so slowly and, in retrospect, stretched out beautifully at our feet.
I won’t be able to stop myself from making more references to time.
Now, I will think about leis and black caps and concerts:
the rise and fall of the sonata, the orchestra moving as one,
the white overhead lights that glinted on the wood of our bows.
I will never again be a part of that symphonic whole
and no one else will know where our rhythm faltered.
I might forget, too, but what I would regret most is forgetting the poems
I scrawled in Punnett squares while I sat in the back of the biology classroom,
watching eraser shavings shed and dust suspend in first-period sunlight.
And I will miss you, too, with an ache so fierce that I’ll carry it with me
as I depart campus for the first time—knowing you won’t be there,
waiting for me, before class and between periods and after the final bell sounds.
It hurts that I won’t know whether you’ll reach the place you always talked about,
but I’ll promise not to forget you, even as the cadence of your voice
fades in the breeze that carries the scent of fresh earth
and ruffles the flowers unfurling their sweet mouths down the road.
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