The protagonist of every romance in my dreams,
I can't even utter your name without ripping apart at the seams.
Chewed up and spit out,
I've been left so rotten.
This corpse wanders the streets desperately waiting for your touch forgotten.
I love you, but I don't like you.
I hate you, but I can't live without you.
Forcing my vocal chords to submit,
I curse your name one last time as I rearrange the fibers holding me together.
Collapsed in the depths of our collective tears,
I bottle the salt used to disturb wounds reminding me of who bore them.
Reminding me of who brought me here.
The vehicle of this descent.
The antagonist of every romance in my dreams.

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.

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.

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

False prophet
Faith confounded

Lust akin to genocide
Indifference feigned innocence

Thirst for treachery
Disregard for rationale

Release me from captivity
Free me from passivity.

Clinging to the edges
of a moving platform
that just refuses
a desperate diplomacy
Losing a grip I may have never once had

Retracing my steps
into familiar footpaths.
I'm constantly letting go
and always holding on.
Maintaining affection through the graze of rope.

Stepping onto my stage
of curtain call acceptance,
A grand finale,
a bittersweet sendoff.
Trepidation by the kick of a stool.

Salvation at the forfeiture of stability.

Gravity my only influence,
the one in which I'll always believe.

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.

Your ghost lives in each footprint
caressing only the memories
of the soles of our feet.
Your scarred hands condemned
to forever gather the salt
from the oceans of tears
that failed to find homes on our cheeks.
Counting every grain,
you won't find substance
in a forlorn dream.
Only sorrow in futility
commitment to the never-ending game.

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.

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.

Counting in sixes
to pass the time,
analyzing the Rorschach test
I only hope to leave behind.

Guilty habits I can taste
on every notch of the barrel.
A legacy left determined
by a hair trigger will.

Permanence to the temporary,
grasping at the lead.
My only saving grace
to replace the thoughts in my head.

Lying next to one another.
Our secrets permeating the air around our bodies,
securing the formation of inseparable bonds.
With a taste of relief, your skin cauterizes my open wounds.
Pasts dwell into the periphery as the moment takes over.
Like providence, we were led to one another.
From our lowest points we rise, destined for a chance at stability.
An end marked with a beginning as we observe my past self escape in all directions.

Give me everything, and I'll give it back.
Be mine, and I'll be yours.
Pick me up from this hole, and I will offer a hand.

Endless stares complement grasped hands as we crawl towards the future.
Lying next to one another.

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.

Entertained only by false futures
Our eyelids paint a peaceful projection.

But what is the weight of a turncoat's word
to six feet of earth's burden?

Straining tired eyes, the saints will smile
as the worms serenade us both to sleep.

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.

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.

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 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.

Reminiscing in halcyon oases,
hidden in rough terrain,
our decaying remains pale
in the shadows of mountains.
Picturing a setting sun,
they shift only to the tune
of a thousand year erosion.
Tarred and feathered to warn the crows,
we committed to the scars on our wrists,
rather than the parachutes on our backs.

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.

Clouds fog my irises,
protecting distant ideals
from the wreckage
I've wrought on myself.

The mirror reflects distorted features
as I stain the glass
with empty breaths
I exhale between each lie.

Only in my sleep
I can see my true face,
masked in inconvenient metaphors
I've chosen to ignore.

Forever on stable trajectory,
I’ll never look through the fog
to accept the reflection
of the face from my dreams.

Chasing ambulances
in pursuit of tragedy
to formulate a fractured identity,
your warmth dissolves
in each empty embrace
complementing the bitterness
in each bare meeting of our lips.
With hands warmed by contempt
we manifest in each taste
of foreign breath on our tongues,
our reluctant fingers reject familiarity.
Through the absence of static
failing to bridge tortured vessels,
a self-fulfilling prophecy
guides clipped wings to take flight.

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.

You are my catharsis and my curse.
Doomed to live on my shoulders,
dedicated to twisting my neck until it breaks.
Forever whispering in my tired ears
the things I so desperately want to hear.
Wiping the tears from my bloodshot eyes,
before they have the chance to paint
my cheeks in your favorite colors.
Pulling on my expired heartstrings with the ink
you could never stand behind.

The most beautiful voices will always
remind me of your loss
and the harshest ones will provide solace
in your perpetual absence.
But loss has become my most prized possession
and no voices can take it from my grasp.
No matter how scarred my knees become,
no matter how cracked my lips feel,
no matter how calloused my palms get,
I'll hold onto you with everything I have,
because you being my catharsis, is my curse.

Slave to sordid thoughts
governing my well-being,
I am constantly consumed
by chemicals I cannot control.

Consider me a scorpion,
surrounded by fire.
With no options left,
I turn my stinger on myself.

Pierced in the back,
I am my own assailant.
With only meaningless metaphors,
I welcome the scorpion's sting.

Only amber could capture
the abandoned embers
on which we’ve exhausted every breath.
Cooled into insignificant ash
we’ve swept them under the rug.
Unbeknownst to the watchful eye
they lie perpetually dormant.
An existence forgotten,
a potential made obsolete.

A polyamorous plague
defined by a sharpness in the spine,
paints a night sky's view
reflecting the grotesque hue
which only your heart could produce.

Draining infected sweat
from tainted sheets,
every petal succumbs
until the flower wilts.
Collapsed under the weight of your disease.

Two porcelain roads
meeting at impasse,
routes of addiction
defining the slave to your map,
devoid of electricity
yearning to exist
between heavenly bodies
in our tragic afterlife.

Wind into cavernous ruin
abandons its destitute source.
With refusal of reciprocal echo
Unworthy lips beg for forgiveness,
having disturbed the idle peace.

Seeking shelter in the fabric
that protects us from a winter morning,
we still live in the illusion
that we'll capture every sunrise
for the chance to see a reciprocal smile
in the air's early radiance.
With two figures connected
in a deceitful penumbra
we can reminisce about
the memories we fail to make
and the scars we gently place
on one another's bare wrists.
As our breath forms a silhouette
in the sun's nascent rays,
we awaken to the empty space in our grasp
reserving our connection only for the moments
in which our minds lay idle.
Decomposing in a gray reality
but thriving in a vibrant trance.

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.

In the middle of a tempest,
I would walk you home
hand in hand,
a million times.
Even if you were the rain
pouring down on us,
hiding the tears covering
the space between our eyes and lips.

Your face is as pale as the clouds.
Somewhere I'll look
to see you in each journey
from the car to the front door.

It's those moments
that I feel your hand in mine
and pull at the empty space
to remind myself of the loss
that surrounds illegitimate memories.

While the pillows aren't the same,
and the dust doesn't collect like it used to,
my skin has forgiven me
for leaving behind your porcelain touch
and my lungs breathe the Florida air easier.

But it doesn't stop my eyes
from craving the chase
of stray red hairs on the sheets,
knowing they would be replaced
in the most relieving nightly reunion.

Still, the scars fade into the void,
every day, one by one.
And the ones that spell your name
have become as faint as your image.
The Florida air holds a debt I could never repay.

Once a glowing porcelain,
your skin has long shed its warmth.
Manifested through raging fire,
what's left sits atop branches hastily gathered.

So make use of the foreign breath
you've deviously collected
and try to keep the blaze at bay.
Exhaling their toxic fumes,
you'll only feed the flames.

Immolated, you concede to the heat
and I still extend a hand,
only to be pulled to my death
as dedication burns me alive.

Your figure appears
only after rainfall
desecrating the plot
that protects my remains.
The garden sacrifices itself
welcoming the footprints
leading to the home you built
in the shadow of my doubts.
As the moisture leaves,
so does your image,
a mirage with scarred hands
begging to be held,
fading into the horizon.

Am I the wilted flower
or the towering oak?
Abandoned by the leaves
who so wish to see me thrive,
only to rejoin me
in a most relieving spring.
Like an old friend,
they know me and complete me.
Speaking in a tongue
reserved for those with new skin.
The perished fallen I've shed
live only in a resentful reflection
having strayed miles away
in time's senseless winds.
Perhaps by now they've crumbled
under the weight of our separation.
Their limbs one with the soil,
their frames dust in a still, winter air.