In The End

In the end

When redemption comes for me

He looks so much

Like you

And is not what absolution has always been?

You

Coming back

To me

And in the space carved out for forgiveness 

He plants "I love you, still" instead

And is this not what mercy has always been?

Love where guilt once grew

Burying the hurt in an unmarked grave

A field of second chances blooming over it

My favourite Poet gets married

And I lament to my friend that there will be no more heartbreak poems

And is this not the kind of tragedy we all long for

The thing about art and

Artist

Is that they are confusing most of the time

Until you have lived the heartbreak of a muse

Until you have lost a child

Or a childhood

Until you have buried your mother

Or resurrected yourself

Until you have spent a summer drowning

In your own oceans

Until you have forgotten the colour of the sky

Or his skin

And maybe this is why I am so

Confused

Because I have not lived this heartbreak yet

But every one of her poems was about a lover lost

And I think of all the loss haunting her love

I think of all the ghost girls under their bed

I think of all the poetry she wrote about someone else

And I cannot understand it

~

He tells me that he loved her for six years

That she was the person that knew him best in the world

He still says her name like he may yet summon her ghost

The consonants getting caught in his teeth

I imagine he tastes her with every mouthful of promises he makes me

All the songs he sings me reminds him of her

I keep them all like scars

~

He says he loves me

And I try to believe him

But it is hard when

All I can imagine is how he would have loved her till the end

If he could have

- to the poems I never had the heart to finish because of you

I wait for inspiration at the door step of my youth. But she has long forsaken the promises we carved into my childhood bedframe. And this is the abandonment of the muse. For there was a season when poetry herself wooed me into unfurling my untried fingers to her pen and for a moment she was encapsulated by the way I bled ink for her. How deep I was willing to tear myself to reach the sweetest similies. Capillaries and couplets. And she kept me. Until the metaphors melted into puddles of half remembered melodies. And she grew bored. I cannot recall which came first.

I always knew her gaze was fickle. Her favour easily shifted with the tilt of the light. And how easy it is to fall into shadow. How beautiful the canvas of the sky when closest to darkness, when teetering on the precipice of the end. I write to her still. Shove the love notes composed of subpar symphonies under the porch where she promised she would return for me. And what does poetry know but already rotting vows.

In some letters I miss her. And in some I ask her forgiveness. In some I bleed, and leave this offering to be unfound. I wring out the papers drenched in desperation, and ask her to hold me. One last time. I ask for a poem. And I use the letters to burn my past to ash. For perhaps the smell of smoke carries farther. Perhaps ash and charred memories, will linger longer than love.

I lost track of the wounds

In the end

The only one that mattered

Was the one you gave me

In the end

The only one that mattered

Was you

In the end

It was the betrayal that slaughtered me

Before the blood loss

When your eyes sliced into my soul

Puncturing the vital organ

I was dead before your blade parted flesh

Ghost before my body hit the ground

~

In the end

My final breath

An exhale of your name

That still tasted like home on the tounge

My blood forgetting to be afraid

In your familar palms

~

But if I am spirit

Why I am the one haunted?

By you

Or some part of you that perished

With me

Begging for mercy

I do not know how to grant you

~

And if you lived

Why did I find you

Haunting your own shell

When I returned to

Forgive you

~

~And Caeser Thinks: If Betrayal Is A Kiss, I am Glad I Tasted It Last From Your Lips

The doctor tells me I might have arthritis at 9 am on a wednesday in november 

My shoes are wet, my coat is soaked, my umbrella is broken 

I have to catch a bus in time for class 

In 20 minutes, 19 minutes, 18 minutes

18 minutes

18 minutes

18

The cold is seeping into my aching bones 

The doctor tells me I might have arthritis

But he does not believe the MRI results

He says I am only 18

18

He says it should be impossible

For my body to be is such a state of

Inevitable disrepair 

And this is all I have ever wanted

For someone to tell me that I am too young to be this old 

That all this ache belongs somewhere 

That I am allowed to hurt

And that they are going to heal me

The doctor tells me I might have arthritis

And there is nothing we can do 

Which is of course not exactly what he says 

He says here are our options

And i hear 

There is nothing we can do 

I hear

This body 

A broken record 

Only getting worse 

The song you once loved eventually

Unrecognizable 

It's surface covered in scar tissue that runs

Too deep

To love back to healing

But you remember 

You remember 

What it sounded like

When it was capable of beauty