a favor

time feels less now i cry over paintings in empty museums, over wrinkled mothers & tired love & houses floating on cliffsides & a sage vase full of flowers i want to say i’m sorry for when the wind blows and tangled hair whips into the seams of your mouth, maybe when the ocean wipes our footprints away when the puddles stepped in splash upwards and darken the bottom of your jeans i know these things don’t last because the prophets said there was an end, perhaps because i cried over a painting once & a kid pointed to it and said to his mother that it was boring but it was two hands turned into one called grieving so in the future if you ever decide that i am worth loving and the microwave is running tell me before it beeps before the crosswalk sign counts down to zero if we’re in bed before the alarm goes off if it’s ever been on your mind if you feel the urge to apologize for the way the wind blows for the chance the earth spinning may make me dizzy for the summers that end the jagged rocks that may dig into our bare feet tell me just before the sun breaks the horizon & the flowers wilt & i never speak again or else never at all.