snow.

I listen to you laugh through the television static, and the resemblance to snow in July gives me a fitful sleep. Though I never let you go, we grew dim together with sticky webs not so easily swept. It's easy to say I miss you or perhaps that we missed each other before the day was over.

At night, by a tree, grown so tall before we were there, the air held more than water or tension. It was an afterthought to breathe, to know that I would never see you again. I haven't seen that tree since. I haven't been back.

If friendship was a spent woman spread eagle on her back, we'd call her our own. Sweet with sweat and the long night behind her, nothing sexual left to open her or close her down. Laying under that tree with a root in her back, and she was always unwilling to call it a night.

What do we do now? Who asks the questions? What's left between the two of us but a night that neither of us dares remember and tree that was there before us?