By Valentia Khumalo
It wasn’t a perfect summer without you.
It wasn’t summer at all,
You were everything summer.
The nights felt meaningless,
The beach felt empty, not secluded.
It was lonely laying under a tree in the park without you.
We’re like dying flowers, no like old houses.
The rust and decay, the endless feeling of slipping away.
That’s all it takes to call it quits.
You moved out in the middle of the night.
Didn’t make a sound,
You left so fast that tire marks still haunt my driveway.
Marred, beautiful things—that’s us.
Some horrible sight in a boulevard down our happy households.
We were good once…it was good once.
But turn a corner into the cul-de-sac of our future.
There was nowhere we could go,
Running in circles gets tiring.
It started with soft rain,
Then it got harder, colder.
Maybe it would snow.
I started to spiral.
I started to go numb.
Memories turned volatile.
I only see you in dreams.
Begging for forgiveness,
And you’d be silent, a monument of my pain.
Valentia is an aspiring writer, poet, and photographer. She studies English literature and Art
history major at Rhodes University in South Africa. She loves reading, art, music, and
photography.
Hot Pot Magazine 