thToo often hearing the words, moving despite them, closer to harm
for creatures who learn early, love comes with a burn
take it away, repair nothing, leave the year a ring in wooded recall
teach the child the brittle end, let her expect rejection as her pinnacle
you made a tragic art form, blown glass with foggy lies
years spent in devotion count for less than bags of garbage when tepid hearts decide
“we’re over you we’ve used the last drop
it’s time to move on
we won’t idle in the odor of regret
we don’t know how to feel it, miss it, hurt
we are the savagery of after thought
the futility of error seen when all is done
we are the person you poured everything into and found was made of holes
no more able to contain than pages of a story left to drown”
you are cold that leaches in through unseen cracks, til rooms are bare of comfort
sharp motions in night when strangled by insights fury come too late for action
rise of sorrow on a day leached of light, the deepest cut out of sight
you are the sting of salt on eternal wound
sky without the moon closed to bereavement
a generation of rebuke playing like tindered sticks in my head
the one violent regret impossible to mend
you stand vain and empty with everything and nothing
would that I could pull down the sky and wrap you in its void
retrace the steps that led us to pile choice upon choice in anguished folly
I’d swap us for each other, you’d stand in mud, sinking beneath your sorrow
now try to run, better we stay and feel the aftermath bathing our faces expressionless
like the snow from Hiroshima or dust of moths wiped on old bulb
flaking morsels of battle where only one had a sword
you will own your mistake as I shall reinvent my regret
the next time I’ll bring to the table a half struck match
and you, if you are combustible, we shall make pyres of intent
let you turn to cinders before you ever drove the blade in