Mentally, I started titling my poems
“If you only knew…”
the minute that you left

See, we were more like
Mother Nature’s children
Than we thought

Both of us polluted
Like the Ocean, I’m so full of this
Trash that everyone seems to leave me with

You were like poisoned vines,
Twisted and full of thorns
And roses you hide from the light

We built a garden though,
psychedelic and shining through the nights
we always stayed up
late for

Three psychics told me I’d love you
And one of them
In a dying breath told me you’d be
A rose

Boy was he right
I pricked myself just to
Hold you and adore you
Every single time
And I’d do it again

See, gardening takes work
So I cultivate this imaginary love
I hold something fragile every day and
Practice moving slowly enough
Not to break it

I listen to strangers talk
Until I’m bored and I keep….on….
Listening
So that I never miss another word
Love speaks

I look at myself in the mirror
And I find something beautiful
So that I can try to grasp
At how it felt the few times you
Actually looked at me like
I was (AM) a flower too.

I AM A ROSE TOO, ******* IT

I breathe you in like the fragrance
Of these roses that bleed my heart dry
And I wish you cut yourself on my poetry
Half as hard as we both have cut ourselves
Wishing we could bleed out whatever
Makes us undesirable

If only you knew
That I hungered for the few times
You came and watered me with your tears
Nourished my roots with your lips
Rolled around in the dirt
And loved our garden

….More than you loved her.