It might have been… simple, sweet, lovely. Each day: leftover perfume and sex—dreams. Right now, I hope for the best. No, No. This is nothing close. You and me. I hope for nothing. I am surely gone, surely sunk. I crave the complication of your face. I taste the leftover scraps of fork and knives against your skin. I see the empty plate. This should never die, yet we are dead. I am gone. You are still there shining like the moon, the stars. Whatever you’re looking for – I walk out each door out of survival, knowing there is no looking back, no looking forward, glowing outlines, as your voice echoes into the hands of another…my favorite words of romantic torment from ’24 and ’69 of how she will be another’s and I am certain. She is. And was.
You’re going off with him. Be on your way. There is nothing left but pieces. Or, come back to these useless arms. Find a way to me one more time. Please, please—don’t believe anything I say! These are all the words I have lost. That I have lost and lost. Nothing is nice, and I understand the black brittle flowers and the rain. I am kidding myself, I know this darkness, this night without stars and the moon, abandoned pieces of your voice, your hair, the forgotten mornings and nights, the remembering of the trees that shaded us, our naked bodies that we kissed over and over, the soft flesh of a dream, that very moment that is nothing more than a lost memory, a small knot in the tree.
Suffering is tearing the veins out. The arteries carry my useless blood. This is only a body of unfulfilled dreams, shivering. You are unfulfilled dreams of one night of loving you forever. Your voice is a dream to remind me to never forget. I draw a thread of blood, words that pulse in the night. Shivering, stuttering, singing in the distance. This might have been simple, sweet, lovely. Something that would make you believe in more than words, more than this breaking heart, this broken body, this you and I, this very best of what is left. Let it fly away with the magpies and the entrails. Let all black and white dreams blur into the blue skies and the ashes of the oak, words, and the storm of our bodies. We will subside as I rest, touching you as nothing more than a distant memory.