the many brushstrokes of our love transformed
colors into muddled messes.
kind words come out in curses
and silence obliterated foundations strong as stone.
  Shifting narratives paint
murals of sadness and neglect
instead of illuminating the truth,
as they filter through the cathedral’s stained glass
like my many sins
in a life before i knew the lines in your irises.
green like grass.

watching the moon for expression
is like waiting
for your words to bandage a wound
pride tore open further than
the deepest depths of an ocean
and the tiny cuts
i feel every time i hear your common name on another man’s body.
they are not the same.
logic tells me
you were by no means extraordinary
or excpetional.
but to me?
you were every breath
in my heaving chest, running out of room for sorrow
every gust of wind running through my hair
and all the tiny atoms of my being that were reborn when you woke each morning.
     Someday far into the future,
     you will die in a regular fashion
     and my heartstrings
     will break
     one
     after
     another.
     and
    again.
    as
    i
    too
    become
    dust.
in a life before i knew the lines in your irises.
green like grass.