Since when did you fall back into the habit
of making homes out of people?

Stop being so silly.
It's dangerous.

You begin again with your inner monologue:
When will you ever learn?
You've slipped back into the glass comfort of
relocating your heart.
Back from the library into
a girl's blue hair, a boy's ricocheting argument,
so it beats in time,
in time
to the indie music pirouetting out of shared earphones.

But then of course,
you're alone in your bedroom, thinking, realizing.
Those flowers that you've planted
in the skin of one, the eyes of another,
the hands and conversations, notes and
t-shirts
will die one day.
Death frightens you, keeps you
wide-eyed fearful.
A black nothing where
you can't grow flowers.

In all this, in all this,
you've forgotten to sow seeds in your own veins
and take care of your own petals.
You're bloodless and so
your petals lie flat and pale,
dying.
It isn't pretty.
And maybe that's why those homes
where you've nurtured a garden,
planted roses, lilies, ******* sunflowers,
eventually crumble, vanish,
leave.
Before you know it, you're staring at somebody else's home,
somebody else's flowers.
And wishing they were yours.

Haven't I told you
not to make homes out of people?