The ghost of you is seen
Everywhere
It’s seen in the toothbrush you left
In your hurry to leave me
It’s seen in the flowers you picked
Just two days ago
When you said you loved me
And forever would be ours
The book you left on the coffee table
And the little bookmark inside
With your doodles on it
The ghost of your hand
On my palm
Your shampoo lingers on the pillow
In the bed we shared
I see you everywhere
In almost everything
It’s painful to know
That you’re still here
Yet not in any way
That has anything to do
With me.

Someone asked me to draw
Draw what heartbreak looks like
I finally got tired of drawing a broken heart
And I started drawing you

the day I finally caught the sun
between my lips
was the day i was set free
from the iron cage
with its iron bars,
that crushed my arms
and shattered my lungs.
i closed my eyes
and let the golden flames
drip down the back of my throat
and coat my tongue like honey.
i felt it spread through
my chest,
felt the thing i
had been chasing
for years
and years
and years.
i watched as the inky blackness
that had suffocated me
for so many silent nights
bled from my fingertips and
sunk into the dirt,
staining the daisies
and wilting the poppies.
a golden bead
slipped
down my cheek,
and i wondered
why my tears
had never tasted so
sweet.
sitting down with the sunflowers,
i watched the cotton candy
clouds
float across the baby blue sky,
and began writing about
the day i swallowed the sun.

Autumn escapes
leaving a void, a disquiet
a haunting pit,
a yearning to renew aches

And I saw candles in the skylight
That forced me to look outward
Their flickered flames in twilight
Made is so there was not an echoed word

I looked upward, onward
At a world ending above me
As if a deaf man’s silence as he hears
The first strings of a symphony

Under that purple and crimson sky
The masses joined my gaze
Looking to horizons, not one eye dry
As endless candles floated in the haze

The sun it set, or did it burst?
A gasp, a rush, then no more
As candles fell from darkened sky
And set fire to the floor

But I will remember the penultimate
The flickered flames in technicolor sky
The beauty near the ending for which I was present
As all and all and all said goodbye

Let us leave for foreign places
Away from this city of boringly beautiful faces

For ash filled cobbled stone streets
Fields of blooded roses and golden wheat

Castles cemented in antiquity
Crumbling walls of barren cities

Abandoned cathedrals of a bygone era
Smoke filled bordello backrooms with mirrors smudged by mascara

Let us leave before the hours turn late
And I have wasted my life awaiting fate

But I grow old
And warm dreams turn cold

How stunning you look tonight
How badly I want to tell you these words I write