I like to think November would be easier with you.
The thirteenth, flash photography, toothy grins with friends I don't speak to anymore, we carried nothing but hope in the pockets of our graduation gowns. the fourteenth was Deepavali, a day spent faking smiles, fighting tears while lighting lamps. the fifteenth, my eighteenth birthday. you didn't even remember.
I used to search for love in crevices of us. Residue of the past, like littered sea shells on the bayside, scattered by rough ocean waves, simply waiting to be picked up and taken home. I would collect our aftermath, letting the sharp fragments in my hands bleed me while I pieced a mosaic of us.
I still go to the beach, and smile when I see sea shells, some chipped, a couple whole, there's grey, pink and purple ones too, so reminiscent of our seventeens. Beautiful on the outside, the empty haunting it's inside.
I'll be twenty this year, two Novembers passed by. Sometimes, I like to think it would be easier with you, but I'll let us rest on the sand.