You hold my hands
Wrap the gauze around my bruised knuckles,
Whisper me pieces of words
For my mind to create
Into stained-glass portraits.
My love, I trust
That your strong vines
Will grow into roses
Not torn by the sharpest of thorns
Or the purest of shards.

You promised me a crystal lake,
Said if I were to be a fallen star
I’d land in a place to call home,
Enveloped in the sepal
Of your cold embrace.
A brick house
In a dying meadow
Where you promised
The grass would grow greener
If I believed it so.

You gifted me a diamond necklace
On a gold chain
That tightened around my neck
With each passing day as
Love’s most exquisite noose.
I wore your broken jewels,
Let them jab into my bones,
And you wiped away the blood
As you braided rose petals
Amidst my sun-drenched locks.

Grass dies as the rose petals
In my heart collect frost,
Leaving me numb as the thorns
Embed themselves
In the bone, leaving scars,
As do you, snapping
Your vines with your
Crystal-crafted knife
From the mirror in which
You looked twice,
And I, once.

Glass is sturdy, but fragile,
And flowers burn
When stars fall without grace,
When they are expelled from the hearth
Of their love.
I watched you set our bridge aflame,
And my portrait’s glass
melted to raindrops,
turning glass petals damp with regret.

My love, you lie
As skin does when its
Elasticity suggests refusal to break,
And your vines snapped
Under grief’s crushing weight.
Bones snap and veins shred
As I land ******* the ashen stone
You called our home
And to you,
I was never a star.

Fire runs wild when
You don’t control it,
Scorching those for which
Weeping won’t bring coolness,
Freezing those for which
Love doesn’t warm them.
Your glass digs in whenever
It’s told to, oh my love,
To you,
I’ve grown cold to.

For your promises were as empty
As the glass from which I drank them.