21:29

It always finds me

before I think of him,

or of you,

or even of myself, before all else.

Twenty-one

isn’t just the hour,

it’s a wound that ticks,

an echo without a voice,

an unspoken “I loved you”

from another life that ended

with eyes wide open.

When everything felt like a beginning,

when our hands hadn’t yet learned to let go,

when time still tasted of summer.

Twenty-nine

the day I was born,

the day I left myself

to live inside someone else.

It may be coincidence, I say,

but the clock doesn’t lie,

nor do my eyes when I see him again

without even looking.