Grief is a son to no mother,
a nomad stuck in place,
complacent to the path forward,
a slave to the porcelain touch
of an outstretched hand
but left only to sweep dry rose petals,
long withered and crumbling,
slipping from in between the pages
that kept this love whole.

You are the corners of my lips
You are the grip on my wrists
You are the habit I won't kick.

I'd walk through the flames,
inheriting any semblance of warmth
to remind myself that the burns
paint my skin in masterpieces.
Dragging uneven nails across my eyelids,
I'd pry reluctant skin apart
and beg my tears to blur the carnage,
knowing that every drop lost in the fire
is one wept for us.

Dedication is a wound
clawed into my chest
caressed by the ridges of your lips
that combed my own
with the taste of your kiss.

My skin separates in each stride
to allow for your apparition
to seep through my pores
clouding every direction
in which I hope to escape.
Your ghost guides me hand in hand,
over the fading footprints
we've made in the concrete
that supports my only home.
Moving forward, block by block,
we uncover the debris we've laid
to cover our tracks
in search of a shade of violet
I'll never see again.
The asphalt parts with each step
revealing a halo in the gutter,
one removed in reverence
to the praises you sang me,
a desecration of the swan song
reverberating in my skull
every single ******* day.

We allow absence in
to provide a catalyst
for gardens to grow
only to learn that life
is simply the vessel of loss.
That the tangled dead roots
beneath the thriving flowers
are the remnants of beauty passed,
surrounded by guarded earth
to protect the perennial grieving.
We soil our calloused hands
to remove the layers of dirt,
revealing the likeness of an unveiled widow
exhausting flakes of skin
to rid herself of grief,
only to discover that the roots we pull
crumble in our hands
as do the memories of love lost.

A stillborn love will infect
every meaningless breath we take
until the last one escapes our lungs
and only then will our passion flatline.
Like red strands of hair falling slowly,
collecting on the same tile
that cradled my knees
in the darkest moments in which
I couldn't bare your absence,
our love dissipates in time,
rediscovered in the most unexpected,
brightest scenes of remembrance
only to be lost again in the hands
of those who would grab at the affection
we savored only for each other.