you can't always tell me
how much you love me
i can't tell if you have a hard time saying it
because of me
or because of you
i have no trouble telling you i love you
i write poems and paint pictures
expressing myself has never been hard
i think that's why it is easier for you
to not be able to hold my hand
as we walk down the street
to not be able to kiss me in public
to not be able to show me you love me
but when it's just us
and we get to be alone
i can feel your heart beat like a car alarm
and i watch your nose scrunch
as your cheeks melt into a smile
everything else falls to the side
nothing else has mattered
and all that i need
is you

i keep restarting my life,
saying
"this is the new beginning"
when is it the middle?
the end?
when oh when will i be happy enough
with my prolouge that i
don't scrap my efforts and attempt to
restart.
when will i just continue forward?

i can only find the open palms of my demons in that red mist, the ones that once held my face in a much harsher way than you do now. your calloused hands feel like heaven instead of the hell that slept in the creases of their fingerprints. sometimes i fall too close and i see their blackened eyes that replay childhood traumas that i have spent years repressing with self-destructive behaviours and alcohol. your own remind me of the rivers i could drown myself in but i must remind myself that diving in will only give me peace, not death, though it feels like death whenever they're not in my sight. sometimes i think about hurting myself again but then i remember the claws of those monsters and how they can't compare to your nails tickling at my back in the late of the night where theirs would be cutting me open. i don't ever want to be in their grip again. never again. never.

i'm glad you are safe with me. even if you are not loving in my arms,
even if you are not kissing my lips.
alcohol is meant to make others seem more attractive but
it physically isn't possible to make you more beautiful than you already are so you stay the same and whilst everyone
around me gets prettier you are still the most heavenly body i could ever lay my eyes on.

there's nothing that could ever
make me look away again.
i don't know why i ever did.

everyone and everything
in the world
is eclipsed by you.

oh, it is eclipsed by your beauty.