She always held herself with the dignity of having a thousand masterpieces hanging from her lips but She never let me stand close enough to hear them
She was good at speaking from a safe distance like that

And as I stood with my toes curled over the edge of loving, she peered down the cliff and asked me if the fall was worth the raging waters
She tried to teach me the difference between love affair and romance, unzipping each word telling me  how some lies are still worth believing, when the truth is still to bitter to swallow whole.

She told me how the windchill can steal all the warmth right out of you, how it even leaves your mouth shivering and empty

I have written enough about it now to know you can see it in someones hands
I have written enough about it now to know you can taste it on someones words
And we stood there on that cliff until the whisper of dusk finally left our lips and my fingers began to turn blue

On the nights I woke up empty, she told me that the darkness swallows up light without even asking its name so don't you dare expect a roll call now. There is no welcome mat outside of 3am but we laid outside the door anyways and she let the sky paint me pictures

On the nights I woke up cold, she reminded me that hands are only as good as what you choose to hold on to, she always said there was some kind of art into weaving your hands into somebody else's. It was the one thing we agreed on.

She said I had a shimmer she couldnt trust just yet but on the night I couldn't read poetry she let me sit next her, she told me that the thing about people and metaphors is that we all need at little editing
and we could all use a little bit more work.