I've given up my fingers so I wouldn't feel your skin
Or let you lay your hands on me the way it's always been
I'll stay inside my head where there is nothing left to lose
And watch myself surrender to the memories of you
I cannot say I want this but I cannot say I don't
And living in the middle makes goodbye my new hello
I've waited out the pressure I was feeling in my bones
I've realized the meaning, what it means to be alone
And if you choose to fight it know my hands are fast asleep
They're locked away with someone who has promises to keep
Although I couldn't see it in the corner of my eye
My person has a reason to continue asking why
But after so much breaking we can never be the same
Or settle in the valley, it's the meaning of your name

Awake;
the morning cacophony of cars sing and
the tread of the many outside our doors
washes through stone walls and into here.

Here;
where we lay and lie and love and the hours
creep by, tiny movements of a hand hastening
the path to our inevitable destruction.

Now;
now as the dawns chorus rises to an inescapable roar
and your arms tighten around my chest; your face
defiantly still buried in the depths of dark hair.

We;
that ****** word, that cage that I cannot outrun,
we move only by staying still; your arms my
sweetest stricture; my breath your way home.

The water falling washes over skin
as supple as your silence,
as I sit and I write and you
simmer still in your thoughts,
thoughts always of her.

My hands are tongue-tied, my mouth
a shutter that ***** open in the wind;
empty words parade their ground but I

think now before I speak.

You watch my movements, tracking each
for the abnormal; waiting for me to mess up
and forget to hide these crimes

you so carefully cultivated.

I jump in the darkness, so you see things
which are not there; shivering screaming
silence, spoken aloud only when

your distance we both share.

I'd write you every second in this life that I have lived
you're present in my thoughts much more than I have ever been
With all of these illusions and the subtleties I see
I found you in the presence of the things that I believe
you struck me as a question I had never thought to ask
and left me with a longing for tomorrows that have passed
It doesn't make much sense, today is crippling my head
but what is this existence if you're gone, asleep or dead
I'm only ever sorry for the words I did not say
afraid of what they'd do because I couldn't get away
I kept you in a corner til you learned to disappear
and I would go in search of you to see if you were near
But keeping up your distance, I could only take a chance
for none of this resembles the extent of our romance
I'd put you in my pocket or forget that you were there
we could have been together but I lost you in a stare

We used to put obedience above our sorry selves
And live inside a creature made of love's redeeming cells
But something came upon us, likeness something like our own
that told us we could separate and sit atop a thrown
Where once I was a woman who was searching for a man
there now exist two people who are turning into sand
And should I be the glass that you created and destroyed
I've since become the ruin that you struggle to avoid
My heart can open wider, be together like it was
a mender and a giver and a product of the dust
So what it is tonight that tries to shift my weaker parts
will disappear in stillness that remains inside my heart