What We’ve Become

Resigned inside

By yesterday’s parting

I unfurl our entwined pasts

In the shadows,

These withering regrets

The tattered sails

Of a harbored ship

=

We never really made it

Stillborn in this love

All we created, only half-formed

Unrecognizable to ourselves

This is what we’ve become

=

When you look at me

You cut right through

Why must I be

The sanctimonious heart

Of suffering?

While you slip away

In the arms of another

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My smile is darkening

Under fabrication, this strength

A suit of armor only enough

To endure not enough to fight

I didn’t die like I thought I would

But I can’t say that I’m alive

I’ll get through in time

But I can’t see when

And I don’t know how

=

You left me hollowing

Standing in the spaces

Where we came undone

Retracing the words

With my shaking pen

You left me unloved

Trapped inside my

Shattered breath

=

We never really made it

Stillborn in this love

All we created, only half-formed

Unrecognizable to ourselves

This is what we’ve become

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Drive-by Valentine

Set out of sight on a bookshelf

There’s a cardboard heart filled

With half-eaten, stale chocolates

On the wall next to the nightstand

I’ve taped your roses upside down

Like a sacrileges cross.

They’ve long since dried

And now their crisp and burnt

Like fried grasshoppers

In a black shoebox I’ve got stacks

Of cards held together with flimsy cliches

That you bought while standing in line

At the supermarket as an after thought

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We sat white-knuckled

With our fingers pressing

Colored napkins into

Absent-minded configurations

Our throats raw from another night

Of imbibing liquid conversation

That’s how people find

Their voices these days

Filtered through the end of bottle

Candy hearts at the bottom,

Drunken mirages of love

=

Who needs hearts like these?

Heart’s bared like teeth,

Guarded viciously all year long

Only to be passed out like tokens

On the 14th of February

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Valentine’s Day is a reminder

Of how lonely we’ve become

Wasting inside our drive-by relationships

A single day to commiserate a

Love that takes a lifetime to create

A love that should be worshiped daily

=

(This is one of those days I could ramble indefinitely, I had to cut a huge chunk of this. I have the ideas today but not the focus so its sloppy.)