per spem ad astra

I wish I could buy you the painting on the wall with the marshmallow clouds that hang over our city in the pastel palette of the hour before nightfall. Perhaps its familiar towers could speak in the  moments that my heart seems to stall, its cerulean trees could share memories  only the buildings on our streets could recall. Or maybe it would remain quiet and say nothing at all, of our friendship or the  years that we have spent together with  our shadows shrinking small. But I thought of you in the streetlamp its yellow pigments climbing hopeful  over the neighborhood’s evening drawl. And I saw you in the light refracted on the windows of the skyscrapers standing lonesome and tall. I wanted to find a way to thank you— for making this place, the home that I call.