I'm a liar because
I pretend so much.
I pretend the tears are not yours.
I pretend your eyes are still green.
I pretend your face is not so pale
almost similar to a corpse's.
I wonder if you know, that sometimes —
sometimes I wish I knew
what love could possibly be.
I walk with paper wounds
and cardboard bruises
and I haven't learned
to keep myself from falling apart
when you tell me
to tell you that I love you.
I would want to tell you
that I never knew
that you could tear apart so violently,
that you could voice,
that your strangled scream could be heard.
An agony so sharp it comes visible.
Tangible.
Palpable.
I pretend to breathe
when it wrings your soul
out of your heart,
bleeding/battered/broken broken broken
broken.
But my fingertips brush yours.
Our arms are a tangle of scars,
we are a pile of bones
and we are not afraid
of each other's darkness
anymore.
Your eyes are fluttering
against my eyelashes,
your hands almost too scared.
I cannot let you know I shattered
when you shattered.
We're shattered words,
unsaid and unheard,
alive only in echoes and thoughts.
We're almost apart,
we're almost whole,
we're almost sure,
we're almost healed.
But my hands are too desperate
snuffing out the fire
because your eyes
are too use to the dark.
We're lying with the truths
that our eyes scream,
were drowning in the dust
that we're not afraid of,
we're not crying
(because we lost our tears).
We're flooded with emotion
but we're empty shells
cracking on the surface and we
collapse.
We collapse because
our knees buckle
and our ankles are disjointed,
all of our past is an ocean
and we're drowning again.
We're drowning until we gasp,
clutching at each other's hands
like it will be the last time.
We're seconds stumbling out of time,
we touch everything and everyone,
and we become their memory.
I grasp your hand and fit the image into a second, burning you into my being.
But your eyes are wide
as though you did not know
we stretch into the unknown;
that we are vacant terrains
standing upended
with empty pockets,
and your hair is too gold
in the sunlight
but your eyes are too green,
and they're screaming so loud so loud
so loud.
They are scared and and questioning me,
they're asking me to stay.
But all I manage is a whisper
because I lost my voice
in the whirlwind I was born out of.

Forever Is such a small word, love
I'll be with you until time ceases to exist.