Fly Away

Wheels on a skateboard,

he road the asphalt like a steady wave.

The San Francisco sky had approached nightfall

and eggplant colored clouds hung like puppets in the sky.

Wisps of wind as their strings

dancing along the brim of his hat.

In a house, time ticked

like the the click of her tongue.

She sat arms folded impatiently as

the smell of carrots hung in the air,

their shavings wound in the sink

like orange caterpillars, 

 sleeping silently in an oversized metal cocoon.

He passed the colored buildings

painted doorways and crooked roofs

that rose and fell like the gentle breath of a high school memory,

a love that was as short as a shoe lace

but one that fiercely wound itself around his heart

and cut into him like barbwire.

At night they'd escape in each other's touch

 but neither knew their minds both wandered to distant thoughts

of forgotten lovers, and fading dreams

of uncharted territory and

the spreading of fragile wings

against the risky winds of the unfamiliar. 

"I'll be home by 7:30," he'd said

but the loop of infinity had made its way 

onto her clock over an hour ago

and had broken easily,

evoking in her a need for escape 

and dropping out the bottom to form a 9.

 And she watched as single digits

took turns as 9's sidekick.

4, 5, and then 6

6o seconds,

then change.

He rode

and she waited,

60 seconds,

then change.

And the carrots got soggy,

and the clouds fell behind a curtain of black

and when he opened their door 

with the tick of the clock

all he found was a note of goodbye

and a whole room of butterflies.