You melted the Sistine chapel with your hydrochloric hands, and then turned to tears and rained only in the way that deflated balloons do.

I saw the tightrope wire of your tongue slip across your lips, the wings of cardinals. You whispered what I meant to you, feathers plucked and falling like dust in sunlight.

(Dirt. Dirt. Dirt.)

God left you in the undone, unrefined rough draft of his holy deliverance speech, his untold story of imperfection and righteousness that is not defined in angels or mistakes or choirs or deformed children.

I felt something snap, looked down, and saw my legs gone. I knew who found them, I only hoped you wouldn't trample the garden of Eden.

I. The prettiest thing I've ever done was hold someone while they cried. This was the most beautiful I've ever looked. She shook like a rabbit, watching cars whir by on the roadside.

II. I've fallen in love with strangers. I've fallen in love with familiar faces, and then fell out of love when I realized they were still strangers.

III. I had a dream my father hated me. I woke up, and I couldn't look at him in the eyes during dinner.

IV. I watched a deer cross the road today, her head hung low in the thick morning mist. I called her Daisy, and Daisy ran into the graph paper patterned trees of the forest. She disappeared as the fog closed in, dashing into the blank scene in front of me, the painted canvas of her back running across the page like a blur of everything I love about living.

Today, the Earth fell in reverse.

I watched a Western backwards, the blood seeping into the Vaquero's chest, his eyes roll forward, his challenger gripping his bleeding arm, the red spot on his jacket shrinking, putting his gun back into the holster. He climbed onto his anxious horse and rode backwards into the sunset, his intact body being washed over with shades of pink and orange.

I watched you trip in reverse, staring at nothing until you popped the shrooms out of your mouth, counted them and then shoved them back into your sweatshirt pocket. I listened to our phone call in reverse. I cried at first, you said something, shameful, then I reeled back, asked you what's the worst you've done, and you said you were okay. Ringing. Silence.

I watched myself in reverse. Laughing, looking at people I love, and all their wonderful dark circle shadowed eyes, messy hair, and dried tears. I watched myself stare at them from a distance, then I felt myself forget their names. I liked your tattoos and I liked your long blonde hair. I forgot about both of those things. I sat alone in my room, I cried, I took back everything I said. I shook off the sadness. I laughed again, fell into your [sober] arms, ran my fingers through your uncut hair. I forgot what your mothers name was, I forgot your favorite color, I forgot your bedtime. I forgot your name. I forgot I loved you.

I wanted to **** myself in reverse. I wanted to watch the bullet whip out of my skull, the bone fit together like puzzle pieces. The worm hole in my brain fills, my blood flows backwards.

My innocence is unfucked to me. My lips curl up. I am happy, I am smiling. My boyfriend takes his unscarred arms and wraps them around my waist. I watch his eyes frown upside down, he tells me he loves me.

I hit fast forward.

I notice your absence like an open wound,
found stuck to my sheets after a rough
night's sleep.
I don't know how it got there,
and I'm wondering what you smoked that you didn't notice half your heart missing this morning.

In the instant it takes a shutter to click and close, you will be gone.

We collected pictures of our perfect pretty smiles, your pearl teeth bear in front, while my lipstick lips, curled into butterfly wings, charmingly drift through the summer air. You are there, you are still there, where I left that you. Before the future became the present and you were no longer here, still there. You are where I cannot reach you.

I held that memory on the tips of my fingers, flicking a lighter close to its edge.

Your hair fell so perfectly over your forehead, but somehow, I still wanted to push it to the side when I looked at the photographs. I guess habit doesn't cease in an instant like the snap of a Polaroid or beat of a heart. When I looked at our pictures, I still wanted to whisper into your ear how much I loved you, chin nuzzled into your neck, fingers draped across your chest, your heart, your warmth. Nothing is permanent. Not even promises. Not even the visions of the kids, the house, the daytime dish washing, and night time monster watching, kids curled up in bed and us, checking on the floor, searching for what is not there and it's funny how even now, even though you're gone, I still find myself doing the same thing. Just alone.

As it caught fire, I watched our perfect lives fall to ashes in the shoe box at my feet, I saw the flash of your eyes and reach of my hand, choking me as it went. They didn't burn as easily as I thought they would.

Im hanging new ones in their place, but the dark spots behind the frames still remain, and your name is written in them.

I have been a lot of things to a lot of people. I have been the friend. The crush. The savior.  The enemy. The surrogate mother to hope. I have been the makeshift medic, twice I have been the future wife. I have lived through experiences that make me broken and cracking, beautiful and shining all at the same ******* time and it is so hard to put it in perspective.

The fragile, the broken, the beautiful, the incomprehensible, the incredible: It is all mine and I am in love with all of it.

I. Talking like we haven't before, me on your bed you on the floor, I tell you I love you and you tell me how you took a dozen pills.

II. We kiss like its our last, rolling around in the grass, every inch of you aching in some way or another.

III. I know this isn't the end, but I also don't know when the end is. Its crawling in my spine like spiders spinning webs, they want to catch the life out of me.

IV. Your brother screams "He wants to **** himself!" As I walk up the stairs, going home, don't tell mum, she already knows and she's ******.