the trick is in your eyes
love and lies
that twist like a knife
in my spine

a deep blue ocean
that I have drowned in
a thousand times

why do I even try?

cut loose, cut free
unshackle my hands
from your tortuous
"I love you"

that is never meant
to server anything
except you own
ego

we are the unlikely creatures -

the ones that move in moonlight,
under a carpet of unforgiving stars

our hearts don’t go unnoticed,
as much as we would like our motives to be

souls scattered across midnight skies,
as everything unfurls

and we are left with nothing
but the atoms of love

Forget
what you think
we are

strip us down
to the bare
bones

and see what
lives beneath
the thoughtless

“I love you’s“

the kisses planted on cheeks,
unthinkingly

would we survive?
with our bones and arteries, on show,
with a pale heart pulsing out its own beat
and not the one we’ve forced upon it

is our core strong enough to withstand this test
of raw becoming

or will we fold like a house of cards
for we have no soul to show

That moment when I said goodbye to you...
I didn’t know it would be for the last time

ordinary Thursday’s, shuddering
with their sudden significance

missing
missing
missing

a word I’ve heard so often now
it’s lost all meaning

and what can I do? There are no streets left
to search, no stone left to be unturned...

I suppose all I can do, is keep you close,
and love you, miss you, and wait...

because I do not believe in last goodbye’s

no,
you are just testing how long
I will wait for you

If this is all there is
if this is all that can be saved
then I want you to know that I’m sorry

I’m sorry for holding your heart in my hand,
and promising to protect it,
when I knew I would fail you

I’m sorry for staring into your eyes,
as if they held the entire ocean,
mysterious and deep in thought
that I could not understand

I’m sorry for being, existing, pulsing
in your life, like a poison in your veins

I’m sorry is the bottom line,
and I will beg you to believe that
until my dying breath

our fingers were fallen stars

bound to fight over fragments of
forever

until there was nothing left but
stardust

we didn’t know that the lightest touch
might be our last

or that ink would seep into our skin
just as sand is devoured by the tides of
the ocean

we can only cling to our little piece of
home

our place in the midnight abyss
of love

You can’t start a fire if your world
is made of paper

the pages of books that have been read so often the ink has stuck to your fingertips

you have tried to wash it off but it is
permanent, now

evidence of words you will never
be able to forget,

those words of loneliness that
ache in your heart

you can’t start a fire
if no one is waiting to pull you out of
the flames