All the lights
have gone out
in my eyes
and you've hidden
the matches.

Didn't I tell you
I was afraid of
the dark?

Light up our backs,
bonfire,
burn,
burn us down
until we float
to the ground
as ashes,
ashen dust,
till death do we
ignite
the lives of those around
us
like city lights
or stars that
don't go out.
Outline.
Framed.
Posture
picture
perfect
Hanging
in this moment,
immortalised,
ageless,
free
like the flames
which lick
the velvet skin of
night,
engulfing our
shadows
as we stand
with our backs to the
stories
they told

- children
of the fire.

We always make sure
to part on a
good note
but this time
it was slightly
off-key.

I make up
conversations
in my head
constructed from the
words you never
say.

I still can't decide
if silence
would be preferable.

It's all coming down.
That which I built up over the years,
brick by brick
with bleeding hands.

I realise now
what it all meant,
those unthought actions and
unacted thoughts.

And I see it all before me
like the sad endings of the movies
you don't want to watch.
Your face in the mirror just like
you wish it wasn't.
Secrets in a drawer and
you regret having looked.

Each story they tell you is like
another dash
- on the canvas that shouldn't be
painted.

Maybe there's a reason for it all
and one day you'll be given a diploma
you don't really need.
Because they're telling us
you'll learn.

But what do you do when you
haven't learnt yet
and the mistakes are still
being made?

And that which you are hiding from
is chasing you
like the sea at your ankles and
it's too cold
so you're running
and you're scared
because this wave is bigger
than the one before.

Suddenly you're drowning
down and down
until you feel your palms press
flat
against the bricks from all that time
before.

You open your eyes for just the
slightest second
to see them stained red
and you know where that's from.

But they're in your way,
why won't they budge?
And you feel yourself
slipping away from under
whatever it was you used
to shield yourself.

It's all fading
and the bricks are
rebuilding themselves
but only in your mind because
that is what happens at
the end.

And you're wishing you had smiled
at the boy on the swing who
didn't yet know the world
and the girl running out of the
school gates on her last day
and the old couple who
kept on bickering.

You wish you had smiled
before it was too late.