For the people who left.

This is for the people who left.

For their unspoken guitar strings 

and the quietude of the sheets on their beds

and for the girls who tried to preserve the scent of their sweatshirts.

The way their shoulders curl over the rest of them reminds me of goodbyes 

and pineapple ice cream jars 

and the girl who only waited for a year.

This is for the girls who made it to the halfway mark and found themselves.

This is for the letters that stole your oxygen and the stories you didn't have time to read 

and the word college that appeared over and over in between sentences.

People will stick up their noses at your heartbreaks

because you made theirs

but they will never know the secret looks that still come with the locked eyes 

and all the conversations you have without saying anything at all.

But this is for the people who left, not the people who are leaving.

For the last-minute t-shirts and the Halloween jerseys 

and polaroids that washed Times Square into a tiny sink.

You will never see the lines between their eyes again

but you will never un-see them, either.

This is for the way their skin creases around their mouth.

It's for the same shirt they wore every Friday night 

and the way they played with the freshener in the car and this is for all the songs 

that used to remind you of that car.

This is for the scent of everything.

You can't smell it anymore but you could describe it if they asked.

This is for the people who left behind a crowd of batting eyes and brimming tears and running noses.

This is for the girls they want to marry 

or the boys they want bury in the dirt 

and the ambitions one-half of them hold onto.

For the people who left behind mixed tapes and film rolls and rainy day CDs.

For all those who left their feelings in and their laundry out.

Come home and fold it, please.

That isn't deep besides the fact that I want you to come home 

and take care of your laundry.

This is for the untouched pillows and the desk in the corner of the room 

and the lightbulb that nobody's had to change.

Who knew a clean floor and neat row of shoes could hurt a mother's heart?

This is for the people we forgot about between closed palms and first kisses

for the goodbyes that got strung along and the restaurants we stopped going to without you.

This is for the people who left

and how easily we forgot them.