When you held my hands in your lap
your stare tattoed eyelashes on my wrists,
they're still bleeding.

You used inexpensive words to tell me
you never wanted to make me cry again,
I'm still sobbing.

My soft-petaled wings faded and crushed
as your last kiss fell from your lips to my cheek,
I'm still wilting.

For three months I held up my green-bean spine
with a meter stick, a lifeless statue of sprouting stem,
I'm still dying.

When I called you I know my hair slipped through
the phone speaker, and you could smell my skin,
You're still yearning.

But it's been three years now, and you no longer
care for teenage laughs and the discovery
of thigh and shoulder kisses,

Yet I'm still writing about
what a beautiful thing to have loved,
what a terrible thing to have said goodbye.