i can still feel it — the ghostly echo of storm clouds it in my throat, now dry and emptied of the softest sighs. they all had fallen on my flower-bed skin, pristine as the petals that once were. or so i pretend. i can still feel it in my throat: the storm, looming. the calm drowning itself, and its haunting, beckoning call to which my feet slowly walk.

some days, it's just you and the uncharted depths of your own skin.

some days, you can bother with poems — some days, you can only drown.

We both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break, and I would've let you. I would've scattered petunias over the wounds you have re-opened. I would've carved you poems on flickering streetlights. I would've set sunrises on fire — kissed you as it died down. I would've skinned your neck open to know what turns my kiss into heartbreak, and what turns that heartbreak into poetry. And we both know you would've broken my heart until there was nothing left to break. It had been years, my love. It had been years on end.

And still, I would let you.

// "December has a softly cruel way of reminding me this."

i miss loving you; i miss the calm and easy and content way of just kissing in the blue hour — clothes, falling out of flushing skin; mine was a map of scars named after estranged people, and yours, an anomaly of carnelians breaking at the softest touch.

and yet, nothing hurt enough. not the fading autumn days leaving us to fall apart in october. not the poems that painted this love to be more beautiful than it actually was. not the carnelians, breaking everywhere.

and i miss loving you, but this october rain isn't cleansing — it just falls cruelly on a heart too eager to break itself.  i miss loving you, but all these blue hours have corrupted what's left of your first tainted kiss. i miss loving you, but betrayal still rests comfortably on my skin: a map of scars named after people. a map of scars cut by carnelians. a map of scars named after you.

and this october rain isn't healing; it's just cruel.

it's just cold.

— fray narte

oh, to live with sadness, so deep — it has started spreading;
i can feel its crushing weight: a stampede.

my trampled bones have started to resemble
wildflowers as they decay
and the soil flinches at the sight
of something so pure —
something so tainted.

behold, the lamb of god
has become the big, cruel wolf;
this is what happens to delicate things
after they're done breaking —
after they're done rotting.
this is what happens to pure things
after the sins and sacrificial rites.

behold, the lamb of god —
the scapegoat
has become the wolf

and one day, it will outrun the forest fog — spreading —
consuming.
devouring.
one day, it will outrun the howling in its chest.
one day it will outrun the ironic aching of ribs, long emptied.

oh, to be a girl and not a wolf.
to live with sadness and trampled bones.
maybe one day, i too, will outrun myself