Drain the remaining passion
from my ever-flowing veins
ensuring I can only feel
through the faulty nerves
trembling below your flush skin.
Syphoning undeserved affection
in the harshest conditions,
I am a walking sickness
plagued with the mental violence
one can only transmit
through the antithesis
of a sacred Midas touch.
Mistaking vulture wings
for those of the most glowing angel,
I am condemned to clean the wounds
from talons that graced my spine
with the deepest cuts.
Contorted, bent over backwards,
I guide tired eyes over the incisions.
Bare flesh in each opening
reflects my inverted visage,
a monument for every misfortune I've allowed.

Does loss leave us
the same way it greets us?
Like eyelids that contract,
forcing a moment of withheld beauty,
of an unrealized, blank canvas,
before suddenly retracting,
revealing the brightest emerald irises
a higher power could possibly create,
one second, here
the next, gone.

The dilemma of departing loss
waxes and wanes in those eyes,
like a changing of the tides,
offering a frenzy of firing neurons
that scatters the chemistry of a solitary mind,
removing an addictive absence
in favor of a purer presence
those irises inject into my veins,
effecting a high that fades in our shadows,
only to reemerge in the beaming sunlight.

The tick of a clock
pulls at my wrists
forcing my breath
to explore new lungs.
But I would sooner
detach every limb
to hold onto a forlorn memory.

The jade in your eyes reminds me that life finds a way, that what we seek grows in the cracks in the concrete we so desperately avoid. That the whispers we exchange act as incantations for the roots to break through the sidewalk beneath us. First, entangling our legs before surrounding our arms, forcing them to redistribute the warmth we've harbored for so long. Like ritual, consummated by amalgamated breaths that shine through a winter night, our touch is the conduit through which color deluges a reminiscent scene, one I've lived a million times and would live a million more if I could. We create significance in each pause between words and the harshest truths fade in what we leave unsaid. But melancholy still lives in the margins of the romance that finds its way through my corroded vocal chords, guiding every movement of my fingers as they brush through the gold of your hair.

My legacy stands only as a testament
to a blind struggle.
To a war both won and lost.
A martyr to loyalty,
I've sculpted my tombstone
with my bare hands
in another's image
so I could sleep soundly underneath it.
A thousand eyes on me
and none would reflect my stare.
So much warmth in my hands
and only empty space in my grasp.
Now only dust collects on my coffin
to signify the passing of time.
I traced a pair of initials
so I could see us together one last time
and leave a halfhearted footprint
like my face in your dreams.
a place for which I paid handsomely
and I'd make it my home
if you would have me.
So that each time you blink
my stare would be reciprocated.
Seeing directly into a memory of my eyes
forgiveness would never look back.

I swear I could see myself
right beside me
on that same sidewalk.
Dilated eyes looking back
praying for temporary solace.
Words glowing in the reflective snow
illuminated by my breath.
"Just one more day."
I looked in the distance
and read the storefronts
like memoirs of my past
and let the shine of the skyscrapers
be the spotlight of my transcendence.
I walked the same blocks
that knew me so well
and saw growth in the windows
projecting my own image.
I felt all the hands
that once held my own,
I tasted the lips that showed me love,
and I felt the sting of each corresponding knife
lodged deep in my spine.
They hit me all at once
as my feet carved a path in the powder.
I sensed relief in the blizzard
and let the clouds fall
to cover my footprints.

Love knew no bounds
but the surface of your skin
and only we could create
a discord so powerful
enough to break its hold.
Still, no force rips apart
what attaches us in our sleep
and no sound can be louder
than that of the ghosts
we surely hear each time
our heads rest on familiar fabric.
The ones that pry our eyes open
and dance in between our ears
to ensure our torment doesn't
set along with the sun.
Nothing brings me closer
to the attachment I left behind
and no amount of time
could change the fact
that we were less
than the sum of our parts,
but no time seems to remove you from me.