You can spend all that time
Looking at yourself in the mirror
But you'll never see what I see when I look at you.
I watched you find your flaws every day.
I wanted you to see your perfections.
That page,
That is what you are.
That is what I see.
I wanted to show you what the world sees when it looks at you.
You're art.
I want you to remember that, as you go forward.
You are art. You make people feel something.
Your beauty and your flaws,
Both are exquisite.
I drew you the way I did,
I doggedly kept on
Until I captured whatever essence makes you mesmerizing,
Because I wanted you to know what it's like for us,
The others,
To look at you.
You are art.
Don't forget it.

Part I.    Fate
It must have been sweet fate
That made us paint the pictures
That we did
Crimson brush strokes
Made self portraits
Crudely drawn in spatters and pools
That were soaked up
And washed away
Along with us
Along with our lives
Discarded in a bucket
And poured down the drain

Part II.  Bird cage

But you? A broken bird in a cage
So beautiful and fragile
Yet so strong
And still able to laugh
And I couldn't stop making you laugh
Because your laughter
Was the only thing
That could make me smile
And there I was
In that rusty cage with you
And we were not broken anymore
When we were together
We were new and washed clean
Our sacrifices on the altars
Accepted
By the sweet Gods of fate

Part III.  Catch and release

How can despair smile?
How can it glow when it sees you?
But the glow soon fades
When you leave the room
And so I am a stalker
Following you down
Those cold hallways
Room to room
To make you laugh until we become 12 again
And peel off our bandages
And run
And let our wounds become scars
And fly from that rusty cage
For so many miles
And so many years
That it becomes nothing
But a memory
But I knew from the moment I saw you
That it was sweet fate
And we would fly away together
Forever

Songbird melodies
taper on endless winds
as the moon drops.
Crumbling walls
surround me
tumbling,
telling tales
of the millions lost.

Thick metal doors
hang on rusty hinges
as the ivy creeps,
supplanting the mortar.
A chipped tooth gleams,
bleached by the rising sun.

I realize now,
we are only vapor,
time waits not &
they are soon forgotten.

First love is stumbling upon an unfamiliar path
A gust of wind in your sails,
You try to ***** the danger from above
But misty clouds serve as a veil
That's the thing about first love
You can't turn around now that you've departed
You just have to ride it through
These seas left uncharted