our love was a burning flame
always hot but never the same
eventually all fires die
after they light up skies
you could have been mine
you just ignored the signs.
every time i got burnt by your flame
i came back again for more pain
i don't know why i love you
but for some reason i do
i know every fire has to die
i just wish it hadn't been mine.

i'm sorry i'm not good at writing love letters
im sure other writers could do it much better
but, you see, i haven't had a lot of practice
a genius in sadness, in love im a novice
yeah sure, people have loved me, but not quite like you
you who rebuilt my smile and painted my skies blue
and that might be cliche but how else do i say
i want you until death takes one of us away.

a paradise for poets, for tortured souls
the ones that stay by the abandoned homes
there is no Heaven for the suffering
there is only death and struggling.
Dante claimed peace to be Limbo,
there must be more than that, though.
it had nothing to be a muse
maybe that's not much to lose
the real hell for dreamers is this world
it kills all of their hopeful work
the artists and writers suffer here
this land is the sum of fear.
but where does the soul find peace,
when do the poets get to believe?
some say peace is in the souls of others,
best friends, soulmates, or pretty lovers
others find it in a flower or a place
but no colorful bloom will stay.
perhaps their solace is their rhymes
moments unsaid written in the lines
one look betrays the heart's violence
the poets curse is to write silence;
his life merely ink stains on paper
that once belonged to a dreamer
the world left his hopes broken
so the dreamer turned into a poet.

it must have felt like the world was ending
when the great mount vesuvius started erupting
but the world didn't end, it kept on spinning
and the dead of pompeii are simply mounds of ash
no one knew that day would be their last.
i could be among those stuck in time
because after you erupted, i didn't just die
covered with the ash you suffocated me in,
i stay reaching for you, forever frozen.
my last words still on my tongue, "don't leave"
im a pillar pumice right where you left me
you were supposed to protect me, but here i am, dead
"goodbye," stuck on a phrase i can't comprehend
it felt like the world was ending
but somehow it kept spinning
i understand the people of pompeii
because we both died the same way.

to the hand i have the honor to hold,
your touch is the only thing i hope to know
the soft words you whisper to me
are as gentle as a warm summer breeze.
who am i to behold such beauty?
and who are you to be so lovely?
in autumn you wrap me in your coat
for me to be warm, you will be cold
and because of these small acts of love
i will never have written about you enough.
your soul will be immortalized
in all the lines i have rhymed
they will say no such person could exist
but they did not experience your kiss.
even if cruel death should take me away,
in my ill-written rhymes you'll stay.

i think about you more than i should.
You always leave without a second look
your kind smile, those eyes, that laugh
no one has ever looked at me like that
it could be a construct of my mind
turning everything into a sign,
but you're always on the tip of my tongue
so my mouth is filling with blood
from biting back my poetry
about how you smile at me.

they say beauty doesn't last forever
it's also said beauty is in the eye of the beholder
so one of these things cannot be true
because if I spend the rest of my life with you
and if every day you say I am pretty
then as long as you live I'll keep my beauty
but who do you see, my view of the mirror?
or a million pieces that cannot be put together?
I think that's why all of my friends don't last
they think it's easy to someone who looks like that
until they are cut by my broken, shattered edges
I'm left with my face, nothing more, nothing less.
one day my hair will gray and my eyes will fade
and I'll just be someone due for a grave
unless you love me, then I will be young and beautiful
until death separates us two lovesick fools
I hope I die first so I never leave your gaze
and that you will love me for all of our days.
but it is not that i want to be pretty forever
but that you will always be my beholder.

i don't dog-ear the pages of my books
because i really hate the way it looks
pages are meant to be read and not bent
i could never bring myself to do it.
until i came across your poetry
that changed my life into a love story
you were chapter books and vintage music
you had a hair brush; you never used it
i found poems you wrote on gum wrappers
all for me, my very own love letters
but every act ends so you left stage right
and left all your poems for me to find
we may have both moved on but we once cared
i even dog-eared the chapter we shared
i bent the pages of my book for you
because that's what people like you do.