there is sand in my soul
from every river bank and ocean's edge
i've ever walked upon.

the drugs they gave didn't cure our brains.
it's after midnight and i'm still thinking of you.
sick and sad, lost on the other side of town.
streetlights caress your hair
shadows steal your eyes away.

the sweetest lips, i remember.
i'll stay on the safe side tonight.

imagine in the dead underneath
a ghost
of every lie ever told.

you were always best at
turning brides to widows.

a nice companion,
the queen of forgetting.

the earth bruised your fragile heart.
i know you mean well but
waking this part of me
will destroy us both.

the day
i raised her
in sunlight and shadow
colors mixing on her lips

you reach out your hands
scooping up the sand from this
burial mound
falling slowly from the cracks
between your fingers,
my former life piled high around your ankles.

you are the countless pages
in books I've never read
rain soaked, sun spilling across
an August afternoon
pouring in hard through the window.

when you wake at noon
i watch your slow movements - your veins traced by sunlight.
the veil of night lifted from your tired eyes.
the open window reminds us of summer's end,
and the inevitable.

i loved you by the river,
your hair pressed into the rain-soaked sand and dead leaves.
caught up in the morning's faintest glow. the firefly lit evening.
of all my spinning thoughts, swirling and dying;
there was you.
my hand on your knee, i kissed you at the traffic stop.
you are blue and red all at once. both winter and summer.
a gift given in secret, tucked away into hollowed bones.

god is dead and i'm still breathing.
you lied and i stole.
the world was not what i imagined. you painted pictures and i fell for everything.
young, wide-eyed, afraid,
you preached about green eyes and love that wasn't
yours to give, but you
gave it anyway.

the same songs still ring in my ears.

once whole, you split me into
something i cannot recognize.