the slow art of breathing bitter

Tarnished

I like wearing this old cardigan with coffee stains

of melancholy and pain.

It's hard to distinguish between them

when they're eating me away.

I love how cold and warm I feel wearing this

on unusually tipsy nights and late spring.

It feels so glittery all of a sudden,

When I paint greyish-orange skies

on my pale canvas. He.

But I love to see the unpainted sky more than 

to see it cuddling with brilliant orange.

My shelves are now home to dust and spiders;

Moth-eaten books, dusty dawn-blaze, fancy bookmarks.

Bedecked in tinsel and pixie lights;

Huddling for chilly warmth.

It's time to sing of cozy cardigans and birthday candles.

We could've been a rose-pink fairy tale

scribbled in pastel pencil and doodled with yellow butterflies.

Or, perhaps, a late-night mistake,

treasured and hidden in the maple covers of my books.

Wine-red lies, lilac dreams;

A lone wish on a dandelion.

This season isn't mine, nor is this town.

They sing of cheap love and rotten ache;

They love chipped nail polish and tight dresses.

Stickier than itching spring.

I like this better than him.

At least, not everything has to have a rhythm in them.

At least there won't be any alarm before anything.

At least I can wave at a stranger and smile back at night.

I wouldn't have to keep my hair braided all the time

or manicure my nails.

It's just getting on and on, and there's

another cloudy summer whisper: Stay.

Better than him.

I do like these coffee stains—burning and itching.

I love this rough cardigan of melancholy,

But not as much as your echoing kiss.

They used to keep me warm;

We used to sit near the fire and sing songs of love.

I have a new song

I've been singing for quite some time.

I've spun the metaphors in emerald cobwebs

and blown my dandelion wishes into the lavender mist cloud;

the one I've been dreaming in

since we broke up.

My hands are numb in wild, painful joy—

Better than him, at least.

We have been hungry for love and pain.

The piano tune swells our hearts in vain.

I don't want to paint our skies the same;

Oh, darling, come back and paint it stale.

Paint it with coffee stains of euphoric melancholia—

Where our stars never fade into the brilliant orange hue,

Where our breaths mingle under the moon's shadow,

Where the rain spells nothing but you.

Only you.

But the labyrinth we wander around is nothing about us;

We rise, we wall until we become dust

in the light through the virescent cobwebs.

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A/N: How about votes for cobwebs everywhere? Well, this was silly, but I love spiderwebs! :D