every second spent
with him is another colour
in my menagerie

im painting the walls
magenta, hazel, aquamarine
they blend and swirl, a new form
of life, plastered onto a beating
wall

every second spent
with him is another colour
i can picture

im reeling from all the
moss green, the incandescent
violet, the royal purple
im reeling, but i like
the feeling of being spun around
in circles?

every second spent
with him is a shade lighter
than before

suddenly my world is saturated,
and everything is too warm,
and everything is too cool,
and suddenly the scarlets are violent
and the baby blues are depressed
and the olive greens are poisonous

every second spent
with him is a colour
lost in my world

i have decided that
black and white is the
only safe place to be, to
see, and yet the grey becomes
too much, the grey in his
hair, his eyes, his skin

every second spent
with him is bleaching
my colour menagerie

but i am the one with
detergent cradled abreast,
and i am the one making
all these colours bleed,
and i am the one running
into a world of no colour,
because i have given all
i know about colours
to him, and

he has
given
none
back

i sit amongst the wreckage and her sisters
destruction watches as i run my fingers
along an old scar, opening a fresh wound

i ***** every finger on every edge i can find,
trying to find some semblance, some feeling
of what used to be

the dust only reminds me of
how long its been, yet no dust
has settled yet on my
mind

within my fingers, i clutch
a fragment, glossy and new,
another one of the hundreds
i've created, one that i am
finally bound to love

right?

i wonder what it would be like
to be a shadow, void of light,
of weight, of stress

hidden from the sun, hidden
from everyone, asleep behind
thick curtains and black drapes

and at night, i'll come out to play
i'll leave my mark in the twisted shapes,
in the uncertain and in the unknown,
only to fade with the day

i will go back into the dusty corners,
alone but not lonely, freed by the realisation
that i am a shadow without trying, a ghost
tethered to plastic store-bought bones, and
i will collapse with all the finality of a thousand
spider webs and a regretful smile

i am free to wander as i please,
feel the whispering forest breeze
my shadow splayed like an ugly crease
my face hidden beneath the trees

i am free to wander as i desire,
daydreams of a foreign liar
once bound to the burning pyre
i'll never start my own fires

i am free to wander as i like,
ball and chain adorned with spikes
and crown of iron, my royal hike
to distant lands, no two alike

i am free to wander as i choose,
ghostly kisses on a blackened bruise
uncharted lands mock my rues
i'll never leave my home, my ruse

I am free to wonder, never to wander
trapped within the glory and splendor
of my own mind, the foreign liar
ties his noose and sets it afire