Saving Daylight

I fell back to a different world that night. It appeared to be one of black and white.

Old fashioned—sure, But I’m speaking more of simplicity.

These two colors have less room for error

Because there are only two options, And that night we fell for both.

An autumn breeze kissed my cheek ,

And you jealously found my forehead with your lips.

I spent hours attempting to become beautiful enough for you

You told me I was--and I almost believed you.

I don’t know what it was about you,

But I have never wanted to be more ‘enough’ for someone as you.

But your words simplified everything

And the way your fingers always found mine said it all.

I’d been anticipating this night for quite some time;

I thought it would make me feel alive again.

Then I realized I was actually anticipating the opposite.

Things had been far too real lately.

School. Work. Bills. Relationships,

It all hit me at once so I had been craving a lack of reality.

The kind of nights we had back in high school.

We lived off of smoke and denial.

I don’t think we indulged in more than a moment of reality for those years.

I want to live the way Hemingway’s words feel.

The type of life I would imagine as I read his short stories.

The book of short stories that I carried everywhere with me,

But had only read 23 pages of.

His words made time stop and soar at the same time.

And you manage to make time feel simple, The way black and white looks simple. The kind of feeling souls chase for a lifetime And the kind of feeling drug dealers place in bags. The kinds of feelings scientists try to create and teachers try to learn. The feeling I have been trying to sustain without dragging you into my mess of colored complications.

That night was daylight savings, And I was ecstatic for one more hour in the day.

An hour of whatever we wanted, An hour that this world was not supposed to have but we all agreed to take.

It reminded me of leap years and how I personally declared February 29

A national holiday to do whatever I wanted because that day was a gift.

In that hour, I wanted to tell you everything I had never said, But I worried I would regret each word that I thought I wanted to tell you--

Because maybe there was a reason I never told you.

I’ve never told you how much you’ve hurt me,

And I’ve never told you how uncertain you’ve made me about love, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever even told you how much I love you.

At 11:59 you took me home and sang me half way to sleep. And at twelve o'clock we walked up to my door and by the time I unlocked it, it was 11 again.

It hit me again how much I hate being a slave to time, but this next hour was all yours and mine.

It suddenly depressed me how much I looked forward to sixty more minutes, as if the clock owned my future. Now I’m not even sure if clocks are real and I think the concept of time may just be a conspiracy—in an attempt to keep black and white nights like tonight a secret from the world. Tonight the clock's hands pointed only to you and me.