1.
You slipped out in the night
leaving only
your period piece illustrations
of lament configurations
and braided wyrm coils
burrowed and replicating
in hollows of sorrow

2.
The best I can do is
listless digging through
your scrapped dream junk gears
and pointed dagger crystals coalesced
all around contraband gifts
scattered throughout

3.
At this point I'd even settle for one more night
so our last moment isn't a
backlash conversion pressed
at the back of the neck
whispering
it's
all
over
now

I run my fingers across razor sharp hints of frost
The first signs of cold
sliced across trees by raging violent wisps.
Thin slivers of blood shimmer down the crystalline
coat of winter desolation
as these wounds gleam with crimson vengeance, cruel and empty.
Spatters of angry, scarlet disappointment gathering
in the pristine emptiness of this icy wasteland.
I do not feel this, I am numb to it.
To me, it is a gentle lock of your hair laying across
the soft rise of your collar bone.
I feel the passionate burning fire of your breath against
my neck.
Still, I have questions that these lonely trees cannot answer.
I lay down in the cold,
entangled in their ancient, deceitful roots
wishing they would provide me with answers.
But they only stare blankly
their sap laden mouths frozen, gnarled,
and silent
These are questions only you can answer.

In dreary codeine inspired nights
Where I have somehow
Wandered back into your bed
We forget who we are
Lose ourselves in
those lucid slipstreams
I know where we stand
And I never want to come down

I am
a smeared
scrawled out
conquered chalk outline
on an incinerated
cinder block wall
To be washed away
in seconds
without a second thought
Like the last beams
of a dying son's light

In a haunted dead fall
anchored by the more inspired
of my heartstrings
and the more hidden
of my hidden things
you reside

We pause to rest on the hilltops just before
the afternoon gives way to evening
While her young child
crawls innocently across the grass
A tiny cherubic visage silhouetted by the slow flare
of the summer sun enshrining the scene
She tells me
that even with these things
that bring her such intense joy
the darkness would not relent
It was always there taunting her
just beneath the surface

She tells me she wants out of these panicked strain eclipses
tugging cantilever protrusions through heart chambers
The worry of writhing sickness murmuring like scorned blasphemers retreating to cimmerian shade
Incessentally dominating
the pleasant moments of her life

I could not offer any reassurances
other than to say
Perhaps these moments
must interlace
forever woven together by
the passage of time
that we are blessed and doomed
to walk alongside them simultaneously
And that just as light and dark
are separate parts of the same day
Our experiences
are just different expressions
of a magnificent existence
on an unstoppable wheel.

There are years of
rusted crimson coating the rails
corroding the way we once traversed
and the secret walkway stones
only we could ever navigate
when the beaten path was
too crowded
have been smoothed bare
We anxiously stand apart
in this seemingly
final void of a thousand
chasms overgrown with
agonizing truths
Every bit of strength
devoted to fighting against
tumbling off the edges
As pain weighs on us with inevitability
falsely alleviated by tiny
brief
moments we disguise as stability
we scrape by
with scarce resources draining
We are
exhausted
and
hurt
and
unsure
Yet in this treacherous space
between us
that we fear falling
into
there is
An untamed look our
eyes
A tremble our
embrace
And a longing in our
hearts
that we cannot ignore
and I know
that our love can outweigh
all hurts