andalusia

it was the backdrop of our togetherness, of danger and beauty and luck, music echoing in stone, figures gliding in flickering gold. sunlight dancing through olive leaves. a fur vest, a borrowed book, frankincense smoke curling out a stained window, a missed bus. a momentum i was inside of and a part of with its own intentions that pulled me into warm, dark rooms with wine and laughter, or into a car with spanish boys if the spring winds turned just right.

a tide that lifted me back to the light, to the end of that invisible thread pulled tight by the fates trailing past tall wooden doors to labyrinths and courtyards with lions and libraries. a river that glows golden at sunset. a distant thunderstorm. gliding on a bike in neighborhoods where parents hold their children’s hands home from school in uniforms and milky sunlight hits me with a memory that isn’t mine, with happiness that feels like sadness so pure i want to disappear into myself.

water like a crystal. a cold patch of sea under hot sun. brown feet on cool stone floors. turquoise water out the window like a gemstone painting. a soft couch in florence, sinking deep on a warm night while the others are laughing, silence forming around us like we’ve slipped underwater. too precious for more, and never enough. nothing as delicate as a love that never was. on a cusp of what’s next, cutting the deck. castles rising against the night by candlelight. star shaped ceilings that open to the sky. ancient voices in the stone halls whisper, look up. the rose gardens. the rose gardens. the rose gardens.