Birthday cake

I've been been thinking of you lately, 
and for the past four years. 

I've been thinking about that time
you stood with your neck bent
back, staring at the sky, 
counting its emptiness,
how afraid you were. 

It took you so long 
to love me like a black hole: 
The way they collapse, 
how the seconds fall off the horizon 
and are gone
forever. 

What happens after we grow
too old for hopscotch and cigarettes?
Will we still hang
our hands out car windows?
Will we remember seventeen when we're forty?

I keep telling myself: 
we are much more than our own light,
our own gravity. 

Will you still call me on the nights
when my voice echoes off the atmosphere? 
Will you remember
the way you are
memorialized
in my eyelashes, and my walls, 
and the letters under my bed? 

How long before
we realize change is born 
from pain? 
Forget the insecurities
and the old mistakes. 
Forget the times we crashed the car
and said the wrong things. 
Forget that we never waved goodbye.  

Just turn around, 
see me, 
tell me this is the start. 

Here I am,
on the edge of this cliff, looking down
at all the years we gave up on. 
Blow out the candles for me, okay?