He took the ribbon and let it fall down with the water, thundering along the current into a cove that his veins couldn't reach, burrowing into the salt-laden cracks. There's sugar in the edges of your fabric darling but that doesn't mean you'll ever mesh with the night sky, no matter how high you climb on your ladder made of UV Light or birthday candles (it falls to pieces beneath you either way). I remember the way he used to write letters because it's scratched into the desk beneath my forty-two empty notebooks, simmering in the silence.

I sit on the floor to write the ends of words because that feels more like making a home.

Did you know (you always know) that once upon a time I was made of pixie dust and dragon fire and lonely midnights with ghosts on the rooftops. Did you know (I don't think you do) that I'm afraid I no longer know how to get lost in that place, that I am an erosion, so prone to cuts on my wrists and bruises under my eyes that I'm no longer worthy enough to fit there.

It hurts not to tell them so but it hurts them to know so. Do you see, do you see? There's a mirror that says she does but my vision's unreliable (so they say so they say. I lost my glasses again).

My, but I missed the ache in my knees that speaks of too many nights spent lying awake doing everything. They hurt more now that I'm doing it (everything) to avoid nothing (nothing at all) think nothing of me thinking of you because if you knew, it would never be the same and I never want to miss you more than I already do so it's nothing. I promise, I promise, I always promise.

He stood at the edge of the falls for the longest time, and nothing happened but the rising sun and whispers from the druids bending their trees. They wanted to walk away away away but roots are hard to break once you no longer hate the soil. Then he took the ribbon and drew it back up again, frayed and wet and (not the same) said "Go back to who I wanted you to be. This isn't what I created."

(No, you held the end of it all. The current did the rest.)

The old man chip chip chipped away at the star, orange peel shavings pooling 'round his feet like molasses. He looked at me and sighed out ******, drifting towards me through a wall of undecided fruit trees. "Sometimes," his hair murmured at me, "you learn that gray's the only color." He paused. And paused further. And the not-pause became silence.

I picked at the Stairway to Heaven with my eyes till it turned black and blue. "What about your fireworks then?"

He cut himself on the chipping knife and the not-pause was more. "Other times," he disjointed, hand dripping copper taste in with the orange slices, "We paint over the gray and forget."

I lit the fuse and blew up the sky, streaking it with sparks of gold. The clouds smell like molasses and rain and all I can see is gray.

I dreamed (once) (twice) that there were flowers on your hands, a corsage mismatched with tattered jeans. I asked who had given it to you (wink wink nudge nudge who’s the lucky one) and you said that it was me (I’m the lucky one?). There were vines growing from your veins like I had infused something beautiful into your skin. Like I had something that beautiful to give.

You smiled at me as we walked down the road, past tornados of chalk dust and children playing hopscotch with flashlights to see by. I wanted to hook my fingers in your belt loop and hold you against me, press my face into your neck and giggle into your ear as we stumbled our way down the street (I’m in love with you).

Somewhere along the way we found a salt shaker full of diamonds that burned hot like stars and we shook them out and stomped them into the asphalt, grinding down a path that lifted behind our steps, ghosting off into the atmosphere. And then we ran out of salt. And then I found some in your eyelashes. And then you kissed me.

And it wasn’t real.

I’m told you had a crush on me. I’ve convinced myself it’s not true (and I miss what I never had). I wish I could pave a street full of starlight with you, but all I’ll get is a smile at my tired eyes (which is close enough and warm, warm, warm). I’d like to fly with you, to see the world you’ve stayed in and loved so, to make you blush again and smile and laugh (you're beautiful).

You think that I don’t love you. I don’t know if you love me. I wish that you would, I wish that it was me that you say you are so in love with, that you want to fly away with and live forever young.

(There are words written on my arm that I'll never say, never sing. Not unless you ask. I'm kind of a coward).

It’s 12 am and I should be asleep but all I can think about is chalk dusted streets and the echo of your smile (warm and mine (I wish I wish)) and the reminder of how you said that you didn't think you'd ever fall in love.

(Just my luck that the most beautiful girl in the world is in love with someone else. Just my luck that I can't be that someone. Just my luck that I'm a coward)

(Just my luck that I quite like being in love)

You're in the clattered traintracks
And the static on my phone
I know you've found your heaven
But you're always welcome home

Blood on my hands and ink on my wrists and your fingers tangled in the telephone wire and I am falling, falling, fallen

He scraped bits of stars, crying like the wind and the cough of an empty volcano. I stood there, a blade of grass weighed down by smoking rain, waiting to stand again.