After You'd Gone

I wonder,
after you'd gone,
if you strip my flesh clean
off my bones
and hang me towards a bright light
will you see my soul
only for how battered, bruised and
broken it is

I wonder if then,
you could see how much
my heart is bleeding

sometimes
I can hear the synovial fluid in
all 206 bones in my body
pop, crack and strain
under the weight of all
the lives you and I could've lived

I regret that it takes a lifetime
to truly know how to live
and I spent mine learning to
feel less
learning the
catastrophic history of you and me
and the feeling
of spending six years
six leagues
beneath the bottom of the sea
because I didn't just want to be
your fucking sweetheart

I wanted to be the love of your life.

memories of you are sometimes
so overpowering
you are the oceans surrounding the lands
and I was a boy who loved your waves
and sometimes loved you in waves

but I was completely afraid
to swim

I'm afraid of losing
something or someone
I love that I refuse
to love at all
and yet when I first met you,
I had the greatest urgency to know you.
it seemed like you could know me,
like you could understand
anything I told you
even though I was in a place
where nobody understood my heart
not even a little bit
because
my heart isn't like the Moon,
going through phases
it is like the Sun
burning bright and hot with fear
and anger
burning anything that comes too close

but I cooled down for you
I let you touch me,
hold me
and kiss me
and yet somehow
I burned brighter around you

or at least I did

I never could move mountains
on my own
much less move them for you
but I always thought we could've climbed them
together
if only you knew how beautiful you are
you'd fall at your own feet
the way I fell for you

I always thought that we couldn't resist
the earthquakes beneath each other's skin
bare and vulnerable
I felt you slipping through
the cracks it leaves us
I'm sorry I couldn't
turn the inside of the chest
a place you'd want to call,
'Home"
all these years,
I've been made to feel
that it's easier to see myself
as a prison no one should enter
and I'm finally starting to believe

as I drive along the shore alone,
the heavy palms kissing the wind
as the Loved do not care
and the Damned come back
begging to fuck me,
I will not flinch
and I will not forget
your kind eyes and
the warmth of you
who made me
laugh again