You love me
Like a dog loves a bone
Or a cat loves a mouse

Which is to say
You love me for a while
Until I no longer taste good

You love me long enough
To carve tooth marks into me
But not long enough for it to stop hurting

You love me
Like a tree loves water
Or the sky loves the stars

Which is to say
You love me when you need me
When I am there and there’s no one better

You love me half the time
When there’s not too much of me
When I am accentuating your beauty

You love me
Like you love yourself
Or I love myself

Which is to say
You love me sometimes
Despite all of the pain

You love parts of me
The parts that are there when I’m happy
Or when I pretend to be happy

You love me
The way you know how to
And I love you the way I do

Why do words look better on a sheet,
When, from my mouth, they seem incomplete?
How is it they flow so well with ink?
If I try to speak them, I cannot think.
Will they transform, someday? From noise to sound?
If I voice words out there, will they be found?

i can see it flicker, slowly dying
a fire that burned once brighter than our love

i pour in all my heart
longing for the flames to soar back to life

aggressively i throw wet wood, needing to heal
when rising smoke blinds my senses, cuts open my lungs

all the shining colors are gone - red, yellow, gold
as smothering darkness sits on my chest

accompanied by deafening silence
that swallowed the healthy sizzling noise

i stare at the orange fervor, mesmerized
unaware of the tears desperately watering my desiccated eyes

no matter how beautiful
all fires burn out

Her desire was love
but she found a land of ice.
In her duty to melt it
she ended up frozen alive.