Everyone hates
a book with a terrible ending.

That disappointment
that settles in on the last page.

My bed is that feeling of disappointment
every morning I wake up on January 1st.

365 pages;
Ending everything with a sorrowful bang.

I wish I could go just one day without loving you,
or striving for your love that never came.
I wish I could fight through the urge for your touch,
Or forget the memories that are coated in shame.

Like the nights I would read every word you've sent me,
The paragraphs as chapters I wrote with you.
That even after all this pain and time has passed,
I've accepted what you had put me through.

I remember the taste of your kiss,
And every lifeline running through you palm,
But you had your way and cut our line short,
Leaving me with a love left embalmed.

So, let's keep this short and sweet,
That was always your intention.
I've given it all up completely,
But I still hold hope for your attention.

My life has been nothing

but a sequence of clever phrases,

nights of feeling alive,

and putting names to faces.

I’d rather be sad with you,

than happy and alone,

because these days go on forever

and my heart is made of stone.

I can only see one shade,

there is only one hue,

and I just can’t seem to picture

this world without you.

So, let’s get into bed,

wrapped in your favorite sweater,

you are my home,

I want to stay here forever.

I'm so wrapped up with being
wrapped up with you
that I can't wrap my head around
being with someone new

We all trek on, flipping pennies for change,
Imprisoned in a world where we don't feel sane.
Scrounging for words at the back of our throats,
as the devil holds his hand mirror inscribed in vain.

The hymns will echo through the hall, a gruesome harmony,
of memories doused in fine sugar smiles,
where the smokers coughs cover the discrete inner war,
enemies bringing themselves to ongoing trials.

We'll cry on the train home with holes in our hearts,
purity crashes experience, flames enrage.
but need not forget, life is a beautiful gateway,
to an afterlife of contentment and minimum wage.

I think the problem I've come to find is that everything makes me sad.
Even the things that make me happy, find a way to make me sad.
I find that love is like a vase of flowers.
There's something special, and antique, about receiving flowers from someone.
And you pick out the most beautiful vase you can scrounge up from the cupboards,
dust it off, and place that bouquet tall and proud in that intricate holder.
And each day, you look at it and it is still so beautiful.
But flowers like that, come with consequences.
When the ends get cut just so you can ogle at the beauty,
they expire.
And one day, you will stumble upon those flowers, weeks later,
to find them completely forgotten about and wilted in a corner.
So, love is like flowers.
A beautiful gift with an expiration date.

You twisted yourself inside me like a root,
the one's that you always wrote about,
and it still drives me crazy that I can't get you out,
but you somehow got out of me.

But you sure did get out, easier than expected.
And I still don't know why you cut off so quick,
but I miss your ******* voice and your crazy bed head
that you never felt like you needed to fix.

And I can't stand how happy you are,
because you said you could never live without me,
but you only did what you know best,
I should've figured you would flee.

Each tear I shed has a part of you,
for all the times that we cried together.
Under blanket forts we hid from the world,
now you hide with someone else.

But I'll never forget my first day with you,
that's over ten years ago now.
And over ten years of memories you seemed to forgotten,
so I'm sat here, writing them down.

We are kids,
we are thieves.
With broken hearts,
and tricks up our sleeves.

We are slaves to the night,
with a mind of our own,
and we’ll only give out
as much as what’s shown.

We are your future,
your present,
your past.

We come with a vengeance,
and hell, we move fast.

You can never forget us,
we steal your time.
Once yours is up,
it becomes mine.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,
the king has lost his golden crown,
the queen is dead with a bullet in her head,
and all the children have somehow drown.

Those sinister black crow hymns
play just outside the windowpane,
in all the years we've been painted black,
we watched this city go down in flames.

Cold lipped killers with a steady shot,
pulling the trigger with no second thought.
Creating a scene, across the movie screen,
undisclosed, undiscovered, never to be caught.

The lights go out and we're still falling,
to that same, sad hymn,
and the chorus is chirping all the way down,
to reunite royalty with it's sin.

Just the thoughts make me miserable,
they call it the terrible two's.
I've lost something completely different
and found something in each of you.

A chemical romance,
an unrequited love.
The blackest of crows,
and a white, untouched dove.

I seek shelter in the curve of your smile,
and comfort in the crook of your neck.
But now those safety nets are dead or gone,
I was given an eternal rain check.

In my dreams I see the two of you,
I know you've seen each other.
I hope your new life is going well,
it's probably best you don't see me smother.

When I close my eyes, I see your smiles,
that's how I'd like to remember.
But if by chance, I was given the chance,
in your arms, I will always surrender.

Do you really think, that even for one second
I don't know that this smoke will turn my lungs black
and eventually everything inside me black, too?

Do you really think, that at any given point
this perpetual death wasn't a suicide?
That each drag wasn't planned to become my ending?

I know I'm going to die, it's out of my control.
But a pack a day won't keep the doctor away,
it will just leave me in a hole I've dug myself.

I don't care about cancer, or being able to breathe
because I'm eighteen years old and I've spent
so much ******* time wishing I couldn't.

I've spent days and nights thinking, wishing,
that my home would be a deathbed, built just for me.
I was wishing and hoping I would be set free.

But for now, I've got a pulse and air in my lungs,
I'll wake up tomorrow morning with a craving,
for approaching death and nicotine.

I fell to the floor of that hospital like the hand of God himself was the gravity on Earth. With each rolling tear, I shed a memory of the life I had with you. Card games to pass the time. Trips through the woods where you would teach me survival tips. You never taught me how to survive loss. When I heard you were gone, I knew moss lead to life, but it wouldn't show me where to go for death.

So, I ended up in a hospital. Where kids with their own problems were just as lost. And I met her. She would scream in her sleep for help but I was without a clue as to how I could help her. As I stared out the plexiglass window, with "help me" and "get me out" carvings becoming apparent with help by the street lights, I realized I had no clue how to help myself either.

The pills. Blue ones, white ones, small ones, big ones. They never helped. I was suckered into trying one after another, with a pinky promise of them helping to make me a happy kid again. The only change they made in me was making me come to an understanding that I'd rather writhe in pain that you're gone and never coming back than to live a life as an emotional vegetable. What fifteen year old kid wants to sit back and watch their friends enjoying the best years of their life while they're sat, struggling to find a laugh somewhere in the haziness of their own mind, only to come up with a subtle smirk hidden somewhere in a buried memory of the past.

It's been some years now. Five in three months. There's been a lot that you have missed in that time, but I know you're not far. When I think hard enough, I can see you ever so slightly in the background of all these memories. And I know it's you in my dreams. I can feel you, and you tell me everything is okay. That voice cracks through my rib cages and plays on the chords of my heart time after time. It's painful. To see you in such an intangible way. Not knowing how long I will have to hold your hand. To tell you I miss you. I love you. But I know you know, just as I know you are there.

Through this time I have learned more about you, and more about myself, than I ever could have imagined. You shine brighter in me with each passing day. Some days you shine so bright, there is a light that radiates from the core of my soul and it burns until it shines over everything. And like moths to a flame, I attract nothing but the beauty you carried inside of you all those years you gave to me. And the beauty is ever flowing and always growing. Like the first time a father sees his newborn daughter. Or the last time that daughter sees her father.

It is your third birthday today.
This whole world is still new to you
You're learning everyday,
how to live like this.

It is your third birthday.
You're looking through new eyes
even if it's only been one more year
Things look different.

It is your third.
birthday without me.
I'll lay your presents in front,
of the solid gold box that holds your ashes.

It is your smile, or the memories,
that keep away my haunting fears.
And I will celebrate your birth,
For all the years you are not here.

Those moments where you just feel alive.
Those moments where maybe there are better things to do than die.
Those moments that remind you to take a breath.
And breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

Hard earned tears can stand no ground,
we've fought through every line unsung,
but we listen so close for the echo of sound,
from a beating heart's last struggling hums.

Each gasp holds life, but not forever,
we give up a little more with each tick,
watching a sunset embark on it's endeavor,
to die and resurrect; breathe out, breathe in.  

It's funny how we can watch it leave,
and not give it a second thought,
because the fact of life is that the sun's death eve,
is only hours before it comes back to life.

And, yes, life is a golden token,
but sometimes it's not so great,
we'll leave with scratch marks on our coffins,
but we'll always remember the date.

It's the creak of the floorboards,
that keeps me awake.
The small sound of absence;
we feel when the sun sets,
the makeshift wind chimes
of the skeletons neatly arranged in the closet.

I'm just a stained lipped kid
in your oh, so colorful life.
Waiting for your winding clock arms
to finally reach me once again,
and hold me until my time is up.

And then here I am, standing on a constellation,
hoping that one of these stars
once died to make a part of you,
like I passed, to be a partial thought
when you wake in the middle of the night.

Light sweat glistening;
frost on your window.
My breath still caught underneath your bed sheets.