I Only Ever Wrote For You After Our End

I only ever wrote for you after our end

Which meant every poem tasted too much like an overripe obituary on the tongue

But when has guilt ever stopped me from doing something I shouldn't

What has poetry ever done but turn me selfish

Let me repaint everything in shades that complement the tale of my own tragedy

For what is the heartbreak of an artist

If not another poem the world could have done without

And I will always love you like you 

Are my first

And you will always love me like I

Fall somewhere inbetween 

The beginning and

The end 

And what can I do

But keep falling

Short 

of forever 

A memory that will not last

No matter how hard I try

To hurt you enough 

For the scars to linger

Even after I am gone

You return for me

Once I've finally

Bled your name

Out my veins 

Sometimes there is grief

But most days there is only

The space in my heart

You left behind

Where nothing grows

Anymore

- somedays missing you is an ocean and somedays it is drought

And this is how it begins

When I rediscover the fear of being undeserving of the things I love

When I forget how to hold the poems on my tounge

When I let the words fester and wilt in my veins

Let the unsaid accumulate in the back of my throat

Dead passages stain my skin shades of neglected potential

When I promise myself I'll end

Or I'll begin

But even I do no trust who I have become

Oh the blood I have shed

Oh the youth I have lost amongst the grief

And for who?

In hopes a river of sorrow, a pathway of scars

Would lead love back

To the hollow parts of me

I carved out

To make room for forgiveness

I deny myself

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

How does a poet ever write about

The things that matter

I want to write about

My mother’s notebook

And my sister the dying star

I want to write about the grieving blackhole

And the beauty of supernova unbecoming

I want to write about

The library that swallowed the sun

And burned

And burned

And burned

I want to write about how every book

Has smelt slightly of smoke to me since then

I want to write about forgiveness

I want to write about my unravelling

The things I will never get back

I want to write about the teardrops of time

Filtering through my lashes

I want to write about the end

I want to write about the end

The end

But it is all so

Hopeless

So infinite

I try to write of it

And I sit with the galaxy in the pit of me

And I ache

The words die on my fingertips

The metaphors swell until my throat is

A rose stem

And I lay on the living room floor

Remembering how to breathe

Promise myself

I do not have to write the poem

Promise myself

I never have to write again

And the galaxy consumes itself

And there are no poems

There are no poems

About the things

That matter

~ don't call me a poet