Heartquake

He resembled Abraham Lincoln in views and looks,
a jawline carved from principle,
voice like a verdict that never needed volume
and I followed him like a nation follows myth.

He was my assigned mentor,
but I choose him for my infatuation.
I studied his pauses more than my syllabus.

I traced words dressed in restraint
and sent through an unmarked number for weeks.
But he knew my cadence,
the way I break a sentence,
the metaphors I reach for
better than I knew myself.

That day,
clouds were shedding incessant tears,
my purple umbrella and his yellow raincoat
were not a match made for this weather.
I stood outside the library, clutching my diary
he stood holding his helmet.
A whisper reached my eardrums
through the hurricane winds-
'People who come together for minds
do not share hearts.”

The building behind me, its shelves,
its silence, its sanctity crumbled
into my chest.
The heartquake wasn't loud, just exact.

My thumb still remembers his number,
But knowledge has tied it into a fist.