The Promise, The Guilt, The Breaking

You have a smile that can make the sun jealous.

Brushing this compliment off like
swatting a fly away from your face.
You’ve never really believed me.
I don’t blame you. I understand
that we never considered ourselves to be addicts,
but we still plunged heart shaped needles filled with
chance after chance inside our collapsing veins.

If I told you
that this life has been
stolen from me
before being a thought
inside my mother’s mind,
would you understand?

The truth is, I’ve painted
sad stories reflecting how I would
lap these toes inside oceanic tidal eyes
and count the waves as numerous
tries your ocean kisses this shore,
yet I’ve never anticipated
the waves to stop.
The truth is, when this tide
has been calmed inside lonely nights
I would wait once again craving
a dream that I know would never come.
But you see, I don’t mind.
I don’t mind.

I learned that even mammals are born able to walk,
and can even run within minutes, so
I’ve never been a soul to believe in moving too fast.
It’s not that I love the chase; I just miss the way
shadows danced alongside your windowpane.

So maybe I let you read the scriptures of my skin
only to watch you speak it inside a different language.
I only know this because I have listened to ghost stories
where you haunt my nightstand alongside the dusk hour
between falling asleep and being woken by a soft noise.
Without raising their voices, they tell me my fears as
I place my ears against haunted wooden floors.
This is when I am waiting forever
for the sound of your footsteps
that I couldn’t guarantee
would ever walk back to me.

You have always smelled like home.
Memories are plastered as wallpaper,
picture frames hold our hearts,
and still-filled are ghosts
looming over peeling paint off walls
that are stained from time passing by,
and this cottage beside the shore
holds your constellation while
trying trying trying to capture
lone flickering embers left
inside the fire pit so we can rekindle flames.

I used to think this was wrong of me to do,
but I’m aware that i’m lucky to be in love with you
because everyone is usually bitter about someone.
I have a taste for starving,
as you and I pirouette trailing tulips
tricking toddlers away from their home towns,

and I just wanted
to get drunk off your aroma
while hands caress
your porcelain skin
cracked from years prior.

All you need to remember is that
despite the time that continues to roil by,
I will forever be waiting inside your tide.
I will know you are near when the sun becomes jealous.
I understand that the waves might whisper hello again �"
and even for a day, I wouldn’t mind because
talking to God like He has loved and lost it all too
only taught me that a love like this is brighter than
our oceans of differences, and as your shadow
covers my face while you leaned in for that
long awaited dance between our lips, I found out
that you will always orbit around me,
and I will always try and catch you
like the lost shooting star I always misplace.

~~~

I thought I told you I was mean.

This arrangement of skin echoes
vibrant warnings of painful symphonies.

You can find me huddled beside lampposts
of these vacant streets kissed by moments of release
as dark clouds rumble above; this hollow
city of my mind is mere vacancy.
I live inside hollow houses cloaking transparency
and the only song I can hear is a soft frequency.

This morning I woke up alone
to not finding any notes whispering
promises of coming back someday.
I tried looking for you, and I found
accusations of sitting on the floor
and letting these question marks
fall from burning vision,
painting self inflicted incisions
and all I could do
was make fleeting decisions.
I know I recorded
our conversations, both good and bad �"
I mishandled them.
I’m terrible at taking care of myself,
let alone something else. We found scratches
on these vinyl memories, and they
only repeat on the bad moments.

I know I said you are dead to me.
I half meant it. We are merely
two gentle skulls making love
in the dirt, and that is how flowers
sprout where the final spark remains.
Lilac wine and bloody disdain.
I can never remove tongues of shame,
yet my love for you is flickering flames
now sighing mourning clouds of rain.
I do not know how to say goodbye.
You are hauntings on hills
as I’ve only romanticized absence.

I am nostalgic starlight always
missing the sun, as I cannot witness
your pleading burn, how naive we were.
Now you know why I visit ghosts
for I always yearn, yet never pleased.
Thirsty for more and yet still diseased.
So this is my final plea;
I wear shades of crimson over these trembling palms
and I cannot wash off this blood.
You remind me of the dead horse I drag around
like a song filled with mournful sounds
so I will bury this horse inside the ground,
because the saying goes: no love lost, no love found.
as that is how sprouting tendrils are forever bound.

Yet only two tears I shed for you:
one for your lack of fight,
one for all this requited plight.
Falsetto wings never witnessing flight.

God gave me to you so I could understand loss at a young age.
I have always been restless, as life becomes a crowded stage.

I know this heart is a battlefield of dying soldiers;
a catalytic construction of a billions halves
combining as a whole, but bursting at the seams
while witnessing oceanic tidal eyes
glimmering through the dim between
learning how to catch a sun again
and surviving with the burns.

~~~

you always revisit me surprisingly
as if you think i’m this harbour city
big enough for a weekend get away
you never realized i’m the farmer town
the one whose sign you never remember
but always pass by
there are no street lights here
no skyway bridge no museums
just chaos and piss
for i make bridges crumble
i am my mother’s homemade syrup
that is thick enough to cut the sweetest touch
i am a flickering fireplace
that would burn you while
your ocean eyes hold currents of cascading pain
cause you’d mention this is how we stay aflame

you must be aware of your wrongdoing
when you would desire to swallow nectar
that would not come for you

i still believe you are and will forever be
the most beautiful rose inside garden of romances
your thorn slices deep with this thought
at such a young age because now i wonder
if another petal will feel synthetic; if all the
years ahead will never scent wild as you.

i always feel in myriads of shades
so when i love i give you wings
and i know this isn’t a good thing
because i gave you the power to leave
this smile that glows
this sadness that pours
so no wonder you didn’t
witness a brokenness that crumbles

i would orchestrate symphonies
yet you never told me you lost hearing.

and i gotta laugh now because
its kind of funny and kinda sad how
people have more guts to sleep beside you
and rinse their flames with your rivers
to create steams of lust than to
pick up the phone and call. Apologize.
For all the broken vases. Scattered roses.
Shards of glass dancing in your light.

Don’t step on caterpillars then complain
you cannot find any butterflies throughout your gardens.

the next time you drink your coffee black
i hope you taste the bitter state you left me in
you’ll keep drinking because
you’d rather have the darkest parts of me
than have had none at all

don’t you know dying men are the most honest?
there is no loyalty between thieves
so I will no longer suffer fools gladly anymore.
ignorance is bliss
as fate condemns a frigid kiss
while these orchestras mold into
symphonic final preludes withering
like an anchor below your oceanic depths
just one more time, this last somber sunrise.

besides, i understand that
the way you always leave
says everything you couldn’t
so as usual, another love poem
written by you
that leaves me sea sick
inside your oceanic tidal eyes
because you have stolen
this calligraphy of an unquenchable thirst
and i ask myself,

why
do you always
end
like this?