Like a flower pressed against someone's clenched fist will leave a final gift of scented skin holding selflessness to who has become killer; I must remember this when someone destroys me again.

I know you'll be a good man for another and I will be to blame for never being good enough. You never kissed this writer in the dark and I don't blame you, because this open envelope poem is my heart's remain and I hate myself for scenting strangers with picked apart scabs bleeding fresh, whisper to audiences I love you ‘til my heartbeat stops, and even if you call the cops I still wouldn't talk.

Within my darkest hour I find selfish courage so our cloud atlas love story will end with me pulling the trigger, and you never finding my corpse in a ****** bathtub with too many love poems that nobody wanted to read. That's the thing ... the terror, the gun fights, the trauma and bloodied moonlight, I can't tell whether you noticed the tide always rose with the passing of midnight. I don’t know if you ever heard me call your name from underwater.

You never kissed this writer in the dark, and I will love you even after the gunshot, the last letter, for I still feel you, and I always wonder now if you were to see me in passing, would you stop me, or let me go? You and I are lifetimes of found perfect places, and my heart will continue to break for all the goodness your next man will receive. My heart will continue to break for every time someone tries to kiss me in the dark, and I pull away.

My purpose in life falls into two very simple yet difficult things to do. The first to learn, the second to cope. This is what someone might call "hard feelings" like the memories left of buying groceries, getting high, the make up *** and hatefucks that are all still too real for me. I'll start letting go of all these little things until I'm far away from you, far from these perfect places and adrift on cloud atlas until I find you again in another life, another perfect place because this lifetime is nothing but one more letter calling itself a poem never sent, one last gunshot never heard.

© 2017 Lucas Kolthof