and i cannot find the stars, which also often remind me of you. and yet, even in their absence, i think of you. these past few months, there is perhaps an hour, maybe two, each day, that my mind permits to pass peacefully, unadulterated by thoughts of you.

you see, my dear, i relive late nights and early mornings, walking home alone after time spent with you, with the faintest shut of my eyelids.

and yet, solitary but for the sound of my heels clicking on the wet pavement, i hadn’t really left you. just as you remain with me now. you are with me always, carried in my thoughts and in the pulse beneath my skin.

you are the starlight above–albeit a poor imitation of the steady beams of your hot gaze, which has a tendency to bear down upon my blushing face, hard and strong, with an intensity like that of the august sun, which, coincidentally, burned me red and raw this afternoon, here, on my tiny little island.

and so, as i stand naked, prodding and poking and pinching my sunburn in the bathroom mirror, i think of you.

you are my sun.

you burn me.

you are my sun.

and perhaps this is why i cannot forget you.

because, after all, how can one ever forget the sun?

even when it is raining, storming, grey and dusty and dark, one can always recall the glorious sunshine which had earlier flooded the room in which one sat. the yard in which one had played.

sunlight pulses through the tree canopy.

you break through me.

it streams through the window panes.

you saturate me.