Desperate limbs drape themselves in the exact same shade of undiluted greengreengreen that we've seen in stagnant pools and empty hearts. A tiny verdant forest of lichens and moss to mask the barren grey of a self inflicted winter. Fingers cast out towards the sky grow thin and wretched with the desperate, exhaustive need need need to ****** the light from the sky. Forgotten are the mouldering piles of discarded stars laying around its feet. I think of that girl as I pick up a damp leaf and carefully press it between love poems and silent reveries.

Like a clocktower, I
Shudder thudthudthudthud
The second hand races
Beyond itself, beating
Out an uneven rhythm
On tired masonry
Whose brittle mortar cracks
Under the strain of the sky
Waiting for a bird or
A breeze to knock me down
Telling me it's okay.

I don't notice when my grip slackens.
The thoughts that held me have long since faded
into the hummmm that rattles through silence.

Untethered, I lose myself. Seemingly
broken into a pack of wild dogs
whose howls and moans echo distantly

Mingling with words uttered aloud
For no one's benefit: "Please, just stop it,"
tumbled down into particulate sound.
(As fine as sand.)

Those fragments that find their way back to me
snap capricious jaws, and left uncertain,
I flinch away from unfamiliar teeth.

You know that bowl that I carry around in my belly?
Too heavy for my frame, I've carried it precariously, trying not to spill.
I've used it to catch the steady drip that's been there since forever. I've used it to catch the rocks that I hurled up like a juggler (to find where I begin). You've taken it, and now you're swirling the contents, rinsing them with your own feelings, your own words (yourloveyourloveyourlove). All the garbage, the petty insecurities and fearsfearsfears, wash out and leave behind the heavier stones and metals that I've used to construct myself, contain myself.
The material of my foundation exposed, you continue to rhythmically, relentlessly reduce me to the shimmersilt at the bottom of the bowl.
Eroding.
Simplifying.
Until you're left with the specks of gold that you say define me.
The evidence of treasured trust that remains after I've allowed you to dump out my contents with gentle, sweeping motions.