nights of cats following cliché heartbreak
both of us single lonely ditched by friends

we smoked weed in your empty pizza
box apartment of turquoise walls I threw

myself into the cats were fighting over
string and I asked how often must we

wake up not in love you said we have
been recently while our phones lit

our faces grim in the dark of tangled
connection I wanted you to come

to Cali with me and we went west
but you stayed in Colorado to smoke

the mountains high and higher clouds
unreachable

(originally published in Setu, Summer 2020)