The thing about love, she thought
Is that it is not a thing, it cannot be bought
It is an unseen truth
Like helium in a balloon,
Or a blind lie
Like eyes bound in silk tie
My worthless heart too easily torn apart
My shoulder I would gift if only his weight I could lift
The only thing to possess
In this flesh colored mess
Is this jagged spine
Once perfectly aligned
Now crooked and broken
Not much of a token
But the thing about thoughts
Is they too can't be bought
Or held and consoled
Defined truths untold
Can circles be misled?
I think I made you up inside my head


I think I made you up, she said
Like helium....inside my head.

You wouldn’t have heard it anyway
All the words I tried to say
Came instead like stocking knees
Protected from the slightest breeze
Someday
You would let me know
You said
Perhaps even words get bruised in your bed
The lie, the love, the flattened mind
I once believed in kind

Kneeling on the stocking knee
Was just another way you deafened me

I do not even know you anymore.
Yet, I believe every stranger that bears your name
Is you.

She turns each page
Slow
Like smoke rising from
An old flame
It is a borrowed book,
Every word she wishes were her own
It is quiet
The only sound
her fingers on the page
Every word. Every page
Turning so slow
She is reading by the light of fireflies
Seeing what she wants
Flashes like matches quickly burning out
Slow, like the smoke rising,
She turns each page
Story unfinished

Another of his cigarettes burns out.
He ignites again.
As if he is helping
As if the burning
Smoking
Burning
Are what she wants
The Book
The Words
They should be the fire
not
His
lips

Finally
You found beauty
A constellation of words
(Whispered screams)
Shattered against the wall
Broken glass
Reflecting
- mirror embedded in
Time
Though this
This is not me.
You are still not sure
Of the stars post stamped
you found beauty
Finally

I was late for you
You feigned as though
I asked you to make the sun rise early
The truth, as he said
Is that it will always rise
With rays so bright
I cannot wait to dip
My words in their brilliant colors
And paint for you
I was late and
moon
for you.