As You Became Real

Summer’s hand had its grip on my back.

the foreign Virginian heat made my skin blister

and bake until I was drenched in a greasy sweat.

 

My leg tapping on the cement patio,

my fingers playing a symphony on the armrest of my chair,

as I tried to hide behind sunglasses while watching you

and words that form on your lips,

spill out in your familiar voice as calm as waves,

unlike the beat pulsating through my chest.

  

Minutes seemed like forever and I felt doomed,

tied to this chair when all I wanted was to reach out,

throw my arms around you and never let go.

  

As the weeks went by I tried to remember every freckle

under your left eye, the way your eyes squinted when you smiled,

and soon, how your voice would sound if you were speaking

the words you wrote to me when I called for you,

alone and scared, in the night.

  

You weren’t real to me yet.

  

Little did I know that come 9 months we’d be

sitting in your car, you’d be holding my shaking and crying body

and the words “Like a fever it grips me, Like a lover it holds”

would be echoing from the speakers of the vehicle,

as you’d watch your friend fall apart in you hands,

when it hit me that my nightmares and my dreams,

had become real.