the slow art of breathing bitter

Silver Lining

What were the things that crossed your mind in the last 45 seconds?

Short-term memory in a trash can,

struggling to breathe fresh air?

Or, perhaps, an overlooked wish 

for oceanic artifacts and buried and blemished people?

There's a pencil sketch of us standing by the shore

on the wall of your ice-white room.

A young lady in daffodil-soaked autumn's glow,

pale olive eyes staring at you wide;

An excruciating melody of the afterglow of journeys,

now fading into the opaque blue air.

Moonwashed ladies and young men,

slow-dancing in clawed happiness.

Me, laying by our side in the summer shade

and counting our dreams stuck in green meadows.

The silver stars, falling onto our smiles,

the last time you sang as I played the piano;

You, standing at the door as I left you on a winter night;

You were blue in pain—everything was on fire, yet

you couldn't cry, for men don't cry.

In these scars on our arms and legs,

these withered roses

and dry blood, never-known passageways—

sleep the angels of truth and false;

A game of untouched and raw

love, charcoal dust cries,

black poetry etched on purple skins,

a painful goodbye without you and me.

We were never good at goodbyes, yet we tried.

We promised the world to each other before the sun died.

We carried bits of each other in ourselves, and now

they're igniting in the forest fire—all dead.

You never wanted to close your eyes,

but you did without telling me.

Like the way, I never wanted to leave your side,

but I did anyway without telling you on a stolen Christmas morning.

You smiled, and I crashed down:

It was a secret lined with silver.

You faded in the dry whispering dark;

I plunged in the cold splashes of heartache and symphony.

Our blue skins forgot to breathe, bleeding auric red.

Another constellation in the crushed ennui of a bleeding death.

–the sky fell silent, and we forgot what it was to be underwater.

——————————————

A/N: I guess these star-crossed lovers deserve an optimistic vote to make up!