Thimbles of Time and Candy

They came with backpacks full of grudges and pencils chewed down to nervous nothings,

her in marbled silence with eyeliner sharp as strategy,

him in duct-taped sneakers and a laugh that rattled like loose screws in a sacred machine,

and they stared at each other across the lines I drew in chalk and decree,

expecting war but finding the crayon-coloured shape of a maybe instead.

I built the walls, mailed the warnings, sealed them in envelopes scented with fear and stamped with brass,

but still they wrote to each other in the language of eye rolls and shared headphones,

passing thimbles of time like contraband,

imagining futures I outlawed in ten official memos

and one whispered plea they never heard.

She sketched his name in the margins of textbooks she pretended to hate,

he saved every candy wrapper she handed him with the grin that meant

we aren’t supposed to matter, so let’s matter more.

They were never supposed to belong to each other,

and yet they folded detention slips into origami hearts,

carved escape plans into bathroom stalls,

and carried the weight of a life they dreamed

but never touched.