It's as if
I've stepped
Out of the valley
of a mountain
but instead of
seeing hopeless
forever journey
my eyes light
upon the glint
of the sun
the winding twisting
pathways, which are many
I can see the tricky
dangerous leaps
and the stretches
of peaceful flowers
rocks crusted in ice
and cliffs laced in ivy
but most of all
the beauty from
all the pain
and a life
not spent in death.

My mind keeps pictures of you up on its walls
                            again
                         ­         and again
I find my thoughts drifting down that river of memory
orbiting around you, like forces of gravity drawn
to the idea of us (if there even is an us)

If I could then I’d lock you outside my brain, leave you out there to rot
in the abyss, where your words couldn't penetrate me
and your lips that work like anesthesia forbidden to numb me again

I won't do you the injustice of romanticizing your imperfections
You're no nebular, you're a black hole, a gaping flaw in creation
Your eyes that held millenniums of history, now hold me no future

You made me forget what it feels to have stability
To not walk out of a room and forget why I left
You make me want to shred the skin you touched
Like a reptile, to become reborn, purified from my past.

There never were any butterflies in your stomach, only parasites
but you fed them to me readily like a disease

So no, I won’t dedicate you another love poem
                 no I want (deserve) better
This isn't what love should be
I’ll write you a poem where the words convulse on the page
and you’ll forget to read it (you always do)

Now what of you
from a place in my memory
from a memory in the past
from the past I barely remember
anymore

Is there
any more you will be to me
than a phone number I cannot call
than a photograph in my computer screen
than a newspaper article I've read and reread again and
again

Are you more of a loss or
a gain- like the profit from falling for love
and the debt from falling apart
in love
and all its constituents from
butterflies to monsters
to daydreams to tear drops to
fireworks

Because this want works like
fire works
to burn then burn out
but never like the fire in your eyes
of passion and compassion
that builds fire then stays
burning up
unless in exchange of more
match sticks you have for
today

Will you forever be a thought from night
to day
from all the merriment I encounter
to all the melancholy after
a thought I'll remember
more striking than a bad news typed in
boldface

This might be like all the others where I put on a
bold face
to pick up one by one
the torn pieces of hope I set up way too high
but not to fix any part of my heart
fully secured
from similar events from before
tick tock tick tock
there, like time, like them, off you go

Off you go