In the Month of May

We look up from beneath the bare trees, curled up together in the dirt, holding and crying, with the buildings above us, jagged and smoking against the gray skyline. Gray is embedded in our clothes and our skin, our eyes and those tears streaking our pale faces.

I wake up on your couch, with your arms around my waist. There is nothing to do but smile at your still face and close my eyes again, moving closer to the curves of your body around mine. I fall back asleep smiling from your warmth.

Airplanes streak across the gray sky, it's midnight black canvas drowned out by smoke and fog. We sit and wait, faces streaked with dirt and dust. As our city collapses around us, I hold your hand, keeping your fingers locked with mine. We say more than our dry throats can manage with eyes and fingers locked together.

You lay your lips against my cheek and my eyes open slowly to meet yours. I pretend you've woken me up, when instead I was just waiting for your own eyes to open. I smile into your chest as you rest your chin on my head. Our fingers lace through each other, over and over again.

We hold each other close, heads in chests and chins on crowns. We stare upwards, from our own place of solitude beneath the ruins of our city. Words and eyes collide from the screams of panic and pain surrounding us. We try to keep the fragility of our own world
together by never letting go.

You hum soft words beneath your breath and I hear every one, letting you pull me closer and closer. The sun lights up your face, softens your harsh features. My eyes lock onto yours, the fragile silence encasing this moment is reason enough for neither of us to speak a word.
We never let go, keeping our own world together at the seams.

Splinters of wood rise around us as we run, fingers locked. We run together, in time, with nothing more than each other and escape on our minds. Our fingers are between others, our interlocked hands slow us down but we never let go. Trees and ruins are our only shelter, the dust and grime cloud around us in plumes, encasing our lungs and hearts. We never let go.

The morning slips away minute by minute, with each passing hour you pull me closer. You are still silent, and I keep my own words behind my lips to keep this moment alive. You never let me go, and I do the same to you, keeping you as close to me as possible. I keep this moment alive by never letting go of your warmth, even as the sun streaming through cracked windows warms our skin alone. Sounds of the day's starting seep in through cracks beneath doors, but I stay next to you, still as can be. I have things to do, and you have places to go, but you stay still next to me and run your fingers across my skin. I do the same to you, a smile pressing against my lips with each moment. We never let go.

We stay still, against fabric and beneath ruins. You run your fingers across my skin and I press my lips against yours. Those days of drinking and lying in the sun did nothing for us, and you let those beautiful eyes of yours leak gray tears in realization of this. I keep your fingers laced through mine, my lips pressed against yours as the dirt covers those around us, our city and its sudden ruins. We stay next to each other, molded into one another, never letting go, through the sun streaming through cracked windows and planes streaking against a once black midnight sky.

I stay next to you as you once stayed next to me, your face in my chest as mine was once in yours. Our fingers are interlocked, and although I hold on for dear life, your fingers encase mine limply. Your body is cold against mine beneath the hot dusty air, beneath a firy midnight sky.

I stay next to you, never leaving, and never letting go.

Those sunny days and the fragility of silence have abandoned us, but I will stay next to you.

Hope has abandoned us, but I will stay next to you.