and when I picture you leaving

and when I picture you leaving
it’s not some hollywood, showstopper moment
you’d let me drive you to the train station,
a silence floating between us, entirely our own
–it’s soft, as most things in your orbit are

as you recede into swells of elsewhere
       I’ll take our silence and fashion myself
a cocoon—calming corners fill up the cab
hands slipping down steering wheel, imagine
the swirl of your curls around these vacant

fingertips, raindrops mosaic this windshield
       deadstop in a downpour—I’ll open this shell
let remnant drops refract back the somber
of this city without you, no longer there to dance

alongside taillight rubies, your fleeting form
collects in prisms atop rumbling engines, drips
down wiper blades until nothing but a silhouette
streams across the back window, soaring to asphalt

and when I picture you leaving,
       you’re wearing bright pink, a bubbling beacon
       poised and perfectly prepared for the
       puddling ground, the adventure to be found
       brewing in the confusion of else-isles

and when I picture you leaving

and I know, you sit with me,
       now—suspended in a stretch of a smile
       seconds span an elastic ecstasy
       begging us closer—

and for some reason,
       all I can manage
       is the thought

       of you leaving.