You'll never know
How fast the car goes
Just by tracing the lights.

You can always take
That first short leap—
Like taking your first baby step.

And have that doubt
First cross your mind
When the light comes big.

Like spotlights for your
Dance of life and death
Between a merciless truck.

And when the time is right
Take flight, play tango
On a four-lane highway

Just to have my sleeve
Be grabbed, be dragged
And my heart—left open—on the other side.

Paper sits—no one has touched
a single piece of me,
like some old dusty ruin.

How could I peel the world down to its crust
serve the core like an orange—
and just be another failed metaphor?

The clouds, in fact, sit above me.
They were never fluffy—only cold.
And I knew, to them, they were all ugly.

And to keep on bending the world
into words, chasing
the familiar taste of mediocrity.

I know—they were all ugly.
But they were mine—they were me.
Fold them in my hands

Bury them with me—
my ugly little truths.
I’m happy to die, to live in them.

Your image still sits
under the red traffic lights
On the other side.

And to watch you whilst
Dancing between the painted
Lines of pedestrian lane,

Your scent left me unmoved.
And to your unnoticed tears
That fell beneath the concrete.

To be chosen by your smile
might be the ugliest way to
Say goodbye to this ugly world.

We could both leave this place,
Cure you over the stars
And be at the moon but

You kissed the dust,
and bled the pavements -
And no one came to save us.

I see your bare collar bone.
The chassis of you.
Your shoulders stiff
from lifting too long.
Your ribs—tight—
holding in breath
to call out life.

I'm going to take you home.
It’s okay. No one will see.
We’ll hide it with a necktie,
drape it in my sleeves.
I’ll walk you there
with my ****** ache
and shoes worn thin
from leaving places too fast.

We should hurry.
My wrists are tired.
They shake from the inside.
My marrow is dusted with fear.
Osteoporosis, they said—
but it’s just a word
for how I’ve been crumbling
before anyone noticed.

I wanted to carry you.
But my bones—
they fold under me.
I have enough ache
just holding myself.
Still,
I want to take you home.
I will strip myself bare
beneath the sun if I must,
but I cannot let you
see my bones.

They said you were too much.
Too loud.
Too soft.
Too strange.
Too broken.

So you went quiet.
Folded in.
Stopped answering to your name.

Your parents didn’t just hurt.
They broke more than bones.
Your friends carved scars.
You stayed in pieces.
The world walked past you.
You stayed still.
Like a glass left on the edge.

But she mattered.
Before anyone looked.
Before they cared.

I watched you shrink.
Corners were safer
Than most people.
I didn’t stop you.
I let you disappear.

Then you came back.
You laughed.
I kept it like a coin.
Your voice—shifting when excited—
I remembered.
No one asked me to.
I just did.

The little things vanish.
But not from me.
You mattered.
Before they said so.

They were wrong.
You weren’t thunder.
You weren’t pain.
You were a person
Wanting to be seen.

Stand.
Even if no one holds you.
Even if the sky looks away.
I will hold you.
Even if I can’t fix it.
Just pretend I can.

You mattered.
You always did.
And I wish I said it.

I caught you holding tight,
A teaspoon waltzing in your cup.
And you smiled like the world -

Hadn’t already taken too much of you.
I could say, "help yourself."
In front of a cake, half-heartedly sliced.

Under the worn wood table,
I won't let you paint a shade of doubt
Between your smile and what you said: “I see.”

To bring my tissue on the way out—
The one that knows what I meant,
The one that tries to keep you.

I'd have to walk on the line
Of "only when I want to."
Or "because you promised me."

You are my world,
But I’m not what the world needs.
And I—I would be just fine.

You are my tangerine,
Brimming bitter-sour
Across the wretched, dusty room.

And you brought me
An orange touch of sun
Glitter glowing on my skin.

To wake wide in the morning,
Curtain dances with fresh air
Into my smoker's lungs.

Even to my deathbed remains
The scene of you that will
Leave me between the walls

Of longing and regret.
And to my morning sunlight,
I will never become better.

I say to you, my tangerine,
You are my very will to live,
And to die, if I cannot save you.