yellow leaves

Because this song is beautiful and what I imagine nostalgia to sound like, and because it's been exactly one year since I roamed this city for the perfect pieces to complete a perfect costume in the hopes of restoring a perfect love. I wanted to be his personal superhero and I felt I was when he turned to me on the walk home and asked "What should we dress up as next year?" like it was the most simple question because of course there would be a next year, and a next year after that, and another next next next always and forever.

Because every next slipped away three weeks later and now a year has passed and I cannot even remember how it feels to wrap myself around the promise of a next and breathe in the comforts of its taken-for-granted-simplicity. He's a faraway past, and there are no superheroes this Halloween, and there are boys still, and these are boys who may be the next in line and the next right now, but will never carry with them the next morning, or the next weekend, or the next call, or the next perfect look shot during a walk home down a neon lit city street.

Because the leaves outside my window have somehow become yellow again and I do not know where this year went and because no boy has looked at me quite that way in exactly one year and because I don't know what comes next and I don't know if I even want a next but I do know I would like a boy who replies and because he's become a year ago and because this song is beautiful.