Ozone

You used to fall asleep in fields with me.
We'd wake up with flowers petals on our palms
and the breezes in our hair. She always hated it
when you walked home with grass stains on your
knees, but it never mattered because her anger
melted like the icy-poles we shared on
summer days.

I taste it like dust, the abandonment you
promised to prolong, floating into my swollen
air ways and forcing me to cough up all
the memories of yesterday. You used to be my
inhaler; you opened up my airways, just like you
opened up my eyes. Now they're caked shut with
the shattered promises you chewed up an
spat back in my face.

I smell it like ozone, the tiny purple wildflowers
that always managed to tangle themselves in your
chestnut hair, even when we weren't lying down. I
always hated them, they'd play games with my allergies
and push me to bite back tears that had nothing to
do with the beauty I wished  that I could make. You
giggled every time, and teased me, joking and
laughing at the way the tears would run down my cheeks
and splash against your heart, leaving tracks in the frost.
Now your violet blooms are tangled in my fingers, forcing
thorns I never knew existed beneath my skin, burning me
like those allergenic tears used to.

I feel it like the dampness that would roll down
lemonade glasses and leave sour rings resting
on the surface of my common sense. It seems
I can't forget that day you dared me to reach higher
than the stars, only to let me fall straight through
open arms. The earth cracked with drought the
month you 'forgot' to call. The crops dried and
withered without my tears to give them the lightly
salted sustenance they need.

I tried to breathe again today, watching to storm clouds
build and hide away the blue sky I'd been painting
in my mind. Maybe soon our fields will grow again
and I can remember you, sleeping with purple petals
brushing your freckled face, and never let my mind's
eye block you out again.