Man:

The rose is flung, it’s set to die
The pale clouds begin to cry
As she walks away, faint and cold
My dark romance’s to unfold

And I look at the dark rose, dead
My soul congests with hate and dread
And I’m beset with darkness, great
Unable to flee love’s dark fate

Woman:

And all I see is ire, grim
As I walk, look away from him
I start to rue the days we had
My life’s begun, bitter and sad

I thought all would work out all right
And we would kiss o’er fine a night
But I was wrong, against my heart
I forced us to fore’er depart

Together:

But though in darkness, stride will we
Without the spark of love’s content
Our love shall live through agony
The second our lone roads we wend

And though we now are lone souls, stray
Not e’en death shall tear us away
For though we are sundered apart
We shall keep each other at heart

In the twilight of dreams
The hollow corridors echo
Louder than ever before
The walls are smeared
In nostalgia
Memories creep in
And congests weary minds
Of youths stripped of youth
Circumstance makes
The heart grow old

In our refusal
To lay down our arms
To the hollow
We march onwards
Like intrepid lions
Cognizant of unkind truth
The way is long
If we crumble now
We may never recover.

The box in which I lay is glass
Walls adorned with paper flowers
Fragility is fragrant and congests the space
That which I inhabit and all that exists
A projector plays across the room
Our fondest, our darkest, our forever unknowns
What can you see from where you are?
Do you feel my anguish, how I slowly crack inside?
I hear a tune playing, pleasant and warm
A familiarity I can’t place but that I welcome nonetheless
Sadness permeates as I finally recognize the twinkle of your laugh, a sound frozen in time
How am I meant to go through life without you here?
I feel you in my soul, in my heart, and you survive in my mind
How can I reconcile the things you will never see, the older you that you can never be?
The walls begin to break, my cruelest mirror
I would give anything to be near you again, hold you dear
I will live the rest of my days aching for you and wishing someone understood
How nothing will ever be the same
Now that you’re gone

The leaves crackle
beneath boots heavy
with our tension.

The thread winds
and it winds
and it winds,
stretched taut

with every word
yelled quietly.
A game of telephone

family gossip factory
pumping out misspoken
and misheard
words. Peacemaker

sticking their nose in the
cerulean fire.
On forced walks

we pick pinecones
and get pricked
by their sharp
edges hard enough

to cause pain,
not quite to bleed.
Outside the pine walls

where my windpipe
can fall open
hearth smoke drifts and congests
and it smells like autumn.