25 daydreams and nightmares i've lived
25 trees i climbed and fell from
25 poems i wrote and then destroyed
25 cherries i stole from Death's lips
25 times i danced in rain trying to forget the pain
25 hopes i found and hopes i lost
25 cigarettes i smoked until suffocation
i died a little more  25 times.

25 years seem sometimes like they went in a blink;
sometimes like it's been an eternity.

i'm looking in the mirror trying to find
a sign of peace
a trace of light
but i can only see
the ugliness building up
the heavy rain in my eyes
the craks in my skin
the 25 wringles life has put all over my face,

25 years and i feel too old, too tired, too weak
to destroy
these 25 walls
i've built
around
myself.

My mouth is dry with the taste of the smoke and yearning,
Incense sticks lit on my tongue with a lick of whiskey lighter fuel.
Burning down to each moment where the ashes of you
Would fall off my tongue,
Until there was nothing but ashes by the end of the night.

She ruined you in the way
Water erodes rock
And time obscures memory.

She was the gentle fawn
That nestled within your contrived roots,
The soft fog
That embraced your unchanging peaks,
But went away
One season too soon.

Too soon,
She was the comet that shot past
And would only reappear in another lifetime,
The painted lady
That touched upon your concave petals,
And then took flight
One moment too soon.

She ruined you in the way
A woodpecker chips at trees
And watercolor makes inked lines run.

Too close,
You let her come too close,
Until you were tangent lines in an otherwise beautiful work of art.

Somebody had to go.

– so when she left,
She was ruined
   In the way human breath
   Makes pure water acidic,
And she ruined you
   In the way acidic water
   Wipes every detail
   Off the face of an architectural masterpiece