These Violent Delights

Free Verse

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

You were lighting matches at the
end of the tunnel while I stood,
quietly too, aflame.
Forever cowardly; forever lonely.

It’s how it goes:
We trade our
scars in the dark
between a
whisper
that I cannot dance with you if my demons can not with yours. We flee from oaths of bittersweet salvation,
with the imprints of your touch to bloom crevices between bone. And when this cotton heart swells with boysenberry bruises,
We realize in these violent delights,
how far; how swift we had fallen.

It’s how it goes.
It’s how this story always goes.
We burned too bright; we
burned too fast and someone
had to leave first.

There is no other retelling of this story.