[there is no epilogue]

she was the kind of girl
who wrote poems on post-its
and left them in odd places
for a certain boy to find
[he did not find them]

he was the kind of boy
who wrote songs for his lover-
played them in the emptiness
of dark suburban streets for
only trees and stars
[she could not hear him]

then each found the other
[in broken pieces]
outside of imperfections
one night in august;
they danced in slick grass
and inhaled each other slowly
until, at prologue's end, they parted,
drunk on voices
and looks
and the pressure of swollen lips

she wasn't sure, at first
if she could let herself be his;
but in the midst of weighing choices
[on her two broken hands],
she fell in love with, first-
his tragedy:

the wounds he carried with him
were deeper than she'd seen before, so
she followed his movement everywhere
and traced the deeper scars
with widened eyes;
she'd never met someone more
broken than herself

she laid in bed beside him
while he walked through
darkened dreamlands;
propped on one arm,
she watched his face distort and
he cried out [and writhed
under the sheets]
his pain struck her in the chest and
her heart ached, for
she had learned to share his hurt

she fell in love with, next-
his love for her:
she could not say just why
he loved her;
she'd never dared to be desired,
never thought
of being thought of
when she was not around

every night she dreamt of him
and in her dreams she fixed them,
the boy and herself,
until their cracks were mortared over
and their wounds unseen to most, but
they came unglued again each morning and
all the dreams she had could not
keep them fast together

and so they parted:
their love became a sentence started and
left hanging, semicolon-ed,
and every time she looked at him,
the girl loved him all over
and every time he looked at her,
the boy thought how he'd hurt her
[she forgave him]

she fell in love with, last-
the way his lips curled
when he laughed,
the pressure of his fingernails
underneath hers, and all the
smallest things he gave her,
without realizing

and she thought she'd found the one
whose needs were hers to fill
but in his turn he broke her
and she is broken, still.