If Only We Were Alive

You lived your hours as a falling leaf,    

Pinned by Panthera's flame.   

You found your door and stumbled aware into darkness,   

Your life, a momentary page inside the gun.   

I glimpsed your stacks of crude-shelled magazines-   

glossy-eyed angels made for a bed of pillows.   

Remember how you smoked brows into crop circles,   

How they flocked with merely a wink of a smile.   

A billion agonies and stars dripping from your teeth,   

jar of tarantula too.   

I would have given everything to know where they lived,   

Bellowing beneath your skin;   

Removing them, one by one    

But you would never have it;   

So I loved you to the stain.