• Scaling the steps past the rooftop garden where we said our goodbyes
    I pass this scene every day on my route home.
    Over my shoulder I glimpse a spectrum of colored clouds
    Each painted hue reminds me of him.

    A stifled tangerine warmth: the first time we met.
    He described my emotions better than I could myself. Feeling like I lacked a home whether in the East or the West
    He'd felt it too.
    I felt vaguely drawn to him, but kept my distance as I should.

    A brilliantly gilded radiance: the evening I ran into him at the escalators just downhill from my apartment.
    We talked from sunset until the sky had gone dark. Finally, dinner-- my first time spending time with him alone.
    It was much more fun than I'd imagined it to be. The ease with which we understood each other calmed my tension.
    Thoughtfully, he took on my perspective more than any man I'd met this year, asking all the right questions.
    In that fairytale-like night
    He shone an enchanting gold.

    Crimson-- a bursting desire to tell him how I felt.
    Torn between my feelings for him and the desire to protect myself. I couldn't speak yet-- not when he asked me why I was stressed while being with him.

    An ethereal rosy blush: The moment I confessed.
    The moment he told me "I would've dated you."
    The barely-contained joy flashes by, faltering into

    A crestfallen grey
    Imbues the clouds in the last of the perishing sunset: the day he moved back home.
    I'd done everything I should,
    Yet my heart was still stained with obscuring shadows of regret.
    I peer desperately into the dimming sky, until I find

    Faint, yet unmistakable
    Wisps of healing silver:
    Remnants of this safeguarded memory
    And a confidence
    That the next time I find someone like you
    I won't hold back out of fear
    My heart will be open
    To cherish the next
    Cloudy sunset.