That sparkle,
that immeasurably forgiving joy and affection is gone,
but the sound of your voice is just familiar enough to make me remember it.

What we're doing here is necrophilia.
It's gross, but we're ******* something that's dead and we both know it.
I think we thought we could bring it back to life with our selfish demands,
but this coffin isn't as comforting as we'd hoped it would be.

We've never talked about the time between,
that period of time when we never talked.
We should have talked.
Without words, you had nowhere to be angry so you swallowed your truths and they turned into blame.

I can feel it when you look at me,
I don't sparkle anymore.
Well, neither do you.

When we talk we say the least, yet every word has a barb.
Too jaded for affection we bob and weave through a minefield of unacknowledged truths.
Our words rot in our bellies while we sew each others mouths shut.
We never wanted this sort of intimacy.

We let the poison out with play, the kind that's done with knives.
So here we are, playing with knives in a minefield,
the only sound is our own hollow laughter.

Behind every "never mind" and "just kidding",
behind the scoreboard of our interactions and every slap of my *** are two shadows;
one covered in armor from breast to backbone,
and one purging a river of poison.

We're chasing a past we know we can't have back,
and the echoes of our old feelings make the silence so much louder than it was
when we didn't talk.

We were beautiful this summer, helplessly alive.
We had such good intentions but the silence and the miles and the fear have made this thing pale,
dead looking.

We try hard to be sorry.

Every kindness hurts because it tastes like the past,
so now instead we barter in bed.
Turns out *** without affection falls under Services Rendered,
but the shape of you so near to me makes me miss you more than I can bare and if you call me tonight, I'll probably answer.  

I guess sometimes the only way to make sure something's not still alive is to poke it with a stick a few times.