We sprawled across your double bed for days on end,
Watching movies and eating Chinese food,
We cuddled and hugged,
But we never once kissed.

I wondered why you didn't want to kiss me,
And couldn't think of a reason why,
Until I realised that you, just like me, a few months before, just needed somebody to hold.

I love you, I never even kissed you goodbye.

Every poem I wrote,
I wrote for you;
To try and erase
The wounds you left.

Today
I am writing for me,
Because I have realized
That these wounds will never
Disappear.

They will stay.

They will scar.

And they will be beautiful.

They will be gashes
In my flower petal skin
Sealed with gold,
Lacing me back together.

They will spill sunlight
And music
And all the venom
That you have filled me with
Will dissolve.

I will be new.

I will be fresh.

I will grow new
Flower petal skin.

There is no more whiskey
Left in my blood;
There is no more reason
To beg you to come home.

I am not a child,
I am
A woman king;

A flower who has been
Whiskey dipped.

And, regardless,
I have bloomed.

To talk to at 12:30 am when my heart is wide open
To tell about the little things I witness
You always make it about yourself

Seconds streaming down and I am no wiser
Every moment pushes you into the past
Pushes me into myself
Like a time-bomb waiting

Then the wrists won't be held
And the eyes won't reflect
And the hair won't shine
Are you mine

And the wind swept them away
All the blue grass
Where we lay and you made secret plans
It swept the memories

I remember to this day
All the others
Love lost maybe buried in a chorus of a song somewhere

Pictures smiling through the rain
Framed to hide the times we struggled but we felt no pain
We felt nothing

And it's the brightest ones that die
Always falling
Slowly becoming something else

I was hoping we'd get through it all

That thing
We all feel
But can't explain
I believe in that