why do roses die but thorns remain?

your name is
forbidden in
my mouth
or in my heart
because when
i think about
you;

i'll cry a little more,
hurt a little stronger
love a little softer
because you no longer
make me feel sober

i'm drunk on the
memory of you

We fade, we slowly sneak
away, out of the anecdotes
and the photos that remain

for strangers, later
also stripped
of our memories

everything digested
into something else
you and we dissolved

in new lives
with their own stories
in which we whisper softly

we will whisper forever
in the ancestral choir
of the human species

between numb and nothing,
i was somewhere in between.
where you felt lonely,
i felt relief.

— we had two very different endings

feeling unkempt
left me untethered, you caught the next cab
south of any air
ill keep close ithaca, warm me from the inside, heading anywhere
be too loud for me
perpetually alone
keep me far from anything ive not learned i need to know

and earthly ties they’ll ask for closure
while the bed pulls you closer
feeling unkempt
choked me breathless, i climbed an unsteady ladder, running out of air
ill be dumb for you, bliss
wrap me in illusion
evidently ill be consequently blind for you
perpetually forgone
any sense of known
tell me again, call me your fool
feeling unkempt

ill forget me again for you.