March 9, 2022

The Pull
- Rahil Najafabadi

I sat on the corner of a couch and I stared—
It was your birthday. We always laughed until 
a few moments of seriousness broke between us. 
I was a child, years behind you in age and wisdom.
I couldn’t make the smile appear. I could only sleep
to lull the pain of a wisdom tooth. Dreams eluded
in the presence of windowed, freezing sleet. The dreams
were real when sleep was not. I woke up and counted candles 
on a cake lit up for the numeric evaluation of an Earth 
that orbits itself in the time we were alive. Gravity pulls us 
—our skin inches lower to a portal toward depression. 
I did not blow out the candles on my birthday. Gravity left 
from that day. The pull was from a song, a painted picture 
on the wall, an unwritten love without rhyme. It hurt; it still hurts.