I didn't understand beauty until I fell in love,
and then that's all I could ever see.
I saw it in chaos, and in destruction;
In scars and open wounds.
In heavily loaded one-word text messages
hey
and texts like love letters taking minutes that feel like hours to send.

I can feel love like a lemon being squeezed on a fresh cut,
and in the excruciating numbness of the dark silence.
I can feel it in those moments where I run out of breath,
and the ones where I breathe too much and hyperventilate and things
start
     to
          fade to
                 Black.

I didn't understand beauty until I fell in love,
and suddenly my pain was pleasure
and my anger was a soothing balm--
and everything was heartbreak
even singing our song.

Your bow tie is a blade
and your lips are a question mark.

It's your smell that I can never escape.

I run far from you into the depths of my mind--
the dusty corners even I can't always find.
Dusting off covers of disorders and drugs,
Past depression and sullen shrugs.

Not too hard to forget that nose,
those eyes,
those lips,
those toes.
How simple it was to get away.
Those ears,
that tongue,
those hips,
those clothes.
Were gone like yesterday.

But...

It's your smell that I can never escape.

She was a flower that had opened its petals too wide.
Had known sorrow and felt pain.
She grew heavy with the weight of the world.
Felt each soul as it was being slain.

Her once fresh, delicate scent was bitter now--
They put her in the back of the store.
Felt herself going down under.
She was the sea that some learned to love.

It was a test to show how much she could suffer,
and she got praise as she took the blows.
Love was the hand that pulled her up before she plundered,
and showed her there was more to be known.