Manhattan is a symphony
Directed by her laugh
And the lines that trace her battle scars
Begin to fade at last

My Sylvia, you've fought a war
With more life yet to go
But I battle the same demons, dear
Please know you're not alone

For some reason I felt compelled to share with others, strangers I guess, I never met them.
Strangers then. Compelled to share with them you. To prove to people who never knew us that I loved you. That we were lovers.
I wonder if I harp on that word too often. Bet I do.

I do.

I connected the misery of your loss into The Antlers - Hospice.
In some cowardly preoccupation with signaling the virtues of  a luminous man I pretended in due process. Much of me as you must understand.

You were a woman and a girl.
And I forced myself under to suffer in some actual mourning.
So a world built on my word.
My hands need rest.
My mind needs rest.
I want to stop.

I'd swallow a breathful of Plath-itudes.
If it'd quieten the lore of some rolling hill of you.
Somewhere scrawled in a red oak desk,
Borders and plyings a mess.

I likened you to a spectre.
For a literal in lieu

Why can't I let up off myself.
Why won't I accept love.

You are the woman protagonist in a fiction
And only your performance merits applause.

You steal your thoughts
From memories never lived
Hoping that terror will hide
In a whisky filled teacup

It's the 1 a.m blues again
(Everything is burning
Everything is burning
Everything is burning)
And your friends pretend happiness
By feigning death and snoring.

You did not sign up for this, you know,
Not the cold nor the bit of blood
From the lip you cut too hard
But you've got it, anyway,
So you may as well ****
But everyone who'd touch you is gone,
Looking to love and not simply make it

You cannot think what then you were

Now it's morning
Go to church, eat a sermon
The leaves are crackling in the wind
And your Sunday is cried away at the pews
Breadcrumbs burning your ears
A poet can bleed, they say,
If his ears are torn up with words enough

Now it's night again and you're trying
"Beloved", you say. The mirror does not reply
"Beautiful", you say. The mirror does not reply
"Broken", you say. The lights go out
Now you can go to bed
With your eyes open
Waiting for sleep to say
"How do you do? Let's hold each other forever."