You're lucky, you know, young sir.

Your face will not fall into lines and you will never wither and fail and have to watch yourself degrade, be given a seat on the bus, a taxi called for you as you leave a shop with empty bags filled with value promises, your body parts replaced until you're more than half-recycled titanium, knowing that you're doomeddoomeddoomed but going out with as little dignity as the modern world can manufacture.

You will never be scared of the streets and the cut-throat carcasses that impersonate the young, never slip and break all because you've become as fragile as a Fabergé egg, whose fault lines too could conceal golden greatness within.

You will never be disillusioned, disavowed nor diagnosed as a faulty by-product of society, to crumble in corners as they count up the continued cost your existence creates and shake their heads.

No, Arthur, this was for the best, you did say that you would never make it past 28?

So many young mouths have echoed this, eyes wide and unlined and naive, brazen to time and unwilling to succumb to its effects regardless of the life lived in between.

It was for the best then, that speeding car and your drunken feet, inebriated on the futility of existence and the unforgiving slip of time. Never mind the driver, the hopeful fool going anywhere until she met you, never mind the infinite loss of possibility to your future self, nor the silence in the halls since you left, yes the trees still sing on as your mother cries.

I had a dream last night that my mother died
And I woke
to a salty pillow and feelings of grief.

Then I remembered that it was you, not her
who had left me.

Andohgod the relief that I felt
has cemented every artery, vein and capillary.
This guilt will crush me to the earth.

I tried to drown myself in a bath once
It was a half-hearted attempt; bubbles bursting
as treacherous lungs forced my mouth to open.
Diving for the surface, cascading water breaking
over my face, upturned.

I sat out under the stars that night
wet hair sticking to my neck in the wind,
hoping hypothermia would get me.
But I was rejected and left, defeated, as the sun rose.

You were there the whole time
Whispering, telling me not to be so stupid
'Get inside, get dry, breathebreathebreathe
Look at you, wasting what I no longer have
I thought you were supposed to be the smart one?'

But you have no body now, no hands to move me,
And the only times I can hear you are times like these
So I will keep on these pathetic attempts,
destroying myself bit by bit,
Because this is all of you that I have left.

They tell me
how I was very lucky to have had someone
that ripped me open when they left.

True love, they say,
is the one that leaves the scars.

I haven't slept since I heard
so many words
Each as meaningless as those of
rain and darkness and dangerdangerdanger.
You didn't listen, my darling, spilt on the concrete.

We put you in the ground today
and their words went down with you
As I stood and wished
that we had never met.

We oscillate
Each turning in our glass circles,
With fluid walls
letting in and keeping out at will.

Circles then projected, transparent barriers
Impeding revolutions of others
Previously content just to spin.

We pause in our rotation
Watching from afar.

Societies shattered silence
Screams, we will all cut ourselves on the shards.

From root to blossom we each grow
Reaching up to see the stars aligned
And although our branches go different ways
Our roots remain forever entwined.

I remember the day
with the cold water-kissed summer grass sticking to my thighs
and you, eyes solemn, downcast, peeking up through thick lashes.

I was afraid
because the words which tumbled from hesitant, confessing lips
left earth to quake and silence in wake.

Except for my hiccups
undignified explosions; face raw red from crying
salt tracing sorrow
white rivers flowed on soft skin.

I remember that day,
where I stood and walked away
not with much clarity.

As though sight and sound surrendered
said, this is it, the end.