Bone shards of our imaginary life
break loose from time to time.
Shredding their way
through my bloodstream,
they rip and tear at the fabric of my carefully pieced together reality.

I loved a quieter version of you.
A place where broken hearts held true.
And hands were firm, but nice, though strong.
A place where voices could belong.

I loved you in a fairy tale, a place where laughter was strong and hale.  I loved you in a tiny place, where no one knew your splintered face.

I loved you once, in a country song,
I loved you, loved you, till the dawn,
When truth erupted from each pore.
Your fists broke through the bathroom door.

How many moments locked in time,
Pictures of,
"I am yours," and,
"You are mine."
A fairytale written inside my head.
Our love affair was always dead.

And if I could only separate
The you I loved
From the you I hate,
Would it smooth those shards
Of broken bone
Of twenty years together,
But always alone?

*I loved the quieter version of you.

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus’ train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of spring:
While, whisp’ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.

Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
A broader browner shade,
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
How indigent the Great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation’s sober eye
Such is the race of Man:
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the Busy and the Gay
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In Fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
We frolic while ’tis May.

the hardest part was starving it
every ideal like springtide flowerets
you turned to archaic grisly gravel
watch them crash through
weathered rooftops
watch them fall

drawing maps with hungry voices
winding staircase. hidden street.
drained from stepping on recurrent
cryptic papers scattered floorboards
no matter how many times they're
cleaned, there they are

bright coral turns vile muddy brown
when it stays in the sun too long
alone, everybody knows that
that's what they thought
beneath a brittle beacon, cloudy day
they'll keep pretending, it'll be okay