You gave me a rose - a fragile thing ; a glorious gift. You told me to treasure it as that will be the last time, the last gift I will receive from you.

You told me to wait, but I don't wait for love. Why should I wait? When it's there right in your hands. That grasp it. Not told in words. No poem. No script. That three worded sentence - I love you.

Love doesn't wait, if you wait it may be too late. It can also be poisonous. A darkness. A void - shadows that lurk and grab you by the shoulders.

This rose rots. It is no longer fresh; vibrant and pure. It's shape a carcass - reminiscent of a dead crow. This crow was cruelly hunted - shot and blood spilling.

Petals crumble. You crumble, falling to the ground, curling into yourself. You crave safety like being in your mother's womb again. Soft and delicate.

You poison yourself. Thinking is this what love is? Not being able to live anymore without them. Thoughts are just burdensome. A bottomless pit of shadows; a darker self creeping in the black.

I wake up, feeling sick. Nauseous and dizzy. To realise poison flows through my veins. I see you , curled in on yourself - stillness in your bones. I question myself with the dagger in my palms. Love is dead - rotting away.

You are the dagger in my palms - the blood in my body, the blood inside of me. In veins. You are the wound - just like the beginning of our story. Predicted and needed.

I am poetry.
My back is the spine.
My arms turn into the cover.
My fingers smooth into pages.
The prints printed on my thumbs bleed words.

I am a poem,
Every single part of me.
I am all the thoughts the human race has ever had.
I am the mother, I am the dad.

When you want a piece of poetry to feed your mind—
I'll peel the layers off my thumb, ‘til they form sentences,
I'll bend my fingers back, back until they turn into stanzas,
I'll snap my arms crooked, ‘til they cry out titles,
I'll arch my back, and screech as they brand me with the name of my owner.

I am a haiku.
The original OG.
You can't handle me.

I am a sonnet,
Betrothed to Shakespeare.
Like a kid learning his alphabet, and he gets stuck on G:
AB(AB)-CD(CD)-EF(EF)-GG.
My couplets are more star-crossed than Romeo and Juliet could ever be.

I am T.S Eliot here to sing you love songs—
Don’t you cast me to The Waste Land.

I am Maya Angelou ‘bout to free the bird from its cage—
And still I rise.

I am Emily Dickinson finally stopping for death—
You can’t **** me.

I am living, breathing poetry.
My veins bleed poetry—fear this blood.
My eyes cry poetry—see these words.
My shampoo brand is poetry—feel these curls.

Rise,
Stand,
And take up the pen.
Poetry is our oxygen.
Let us all breathe it in.

Our words will save this nation.
From a simple sentence to a conversation.

We are poetry.
We will save the world.

You are poetry.
You can change the world.

I am poetry.
Use me to save this world!

And when I finally die,
I'll be reincarnated into a tree.
I'll be turned into pages for the next poets to use.
And when they do—
    
I'll be free.