XSwan-SongX

the dead rose of our love has rotted in my veins, your songs crashing against the concrete inside my skull - pieces drifting on still tides. this distance is created by being too similar, too much alike, and this misunderstanding is so profound it makes my eyes burn. someone's body is buried on a road untraveled that we implied somewhere between then and now. i still don't know if this is my grave or yours, love, but i think it's the wrong colour.

his fingerprints lingered mockingly on the edges of the stains on her windowpanes and she slept in diagonals, haunted, uneasy, with insomnia lying parallel beneath the bedsheets - she could have sworn she saw the ocean dancing hand-in-hand with insanity before waking empty-mouthed in a bathtub too stiff to hold a corpse, her limbs blurred in cold porcelain in the place dreams go to die. see, there's a lacklustre shade in sunshine boys - she knows a stem of toxicity burns in his veins, but she suspends her disbelief each time, she lets the smoke from his half-used cigarettes devour the space between them until there's nothing left but

She drifts in a place between worlds, a weightless entity floating on silky water. It feels like she is falling, and yet somehow flying in this land that is nowhere and everywhere all at once. There is no day here, only times when faded light dances above her eyelids and the sharp scents of antiseptic, sterile surfaces penetrate her nostrils - a living death punctuated only by the beeps of a heart monitor. There is no night here either, only a dark abyss of silence that always comes before her dreams. It is fitting, she thinks, that at this borderline between worlds she dreams only of a Sea Serpent - a creature of the deep that surfaces rare

swirled in rust, a cosmic spark awakens - i hear forests breathing, their dreams coiled like wishbones clenched in fingers; a heartbeat stutters across this vast expanse in time with the collision of wor(l)ds.

i watch you tread gently on the edges of yourself, remaining in the penumbra between all and nothing - a sub-atomic mystery unable to be solved. yesterday, you couldn't decide whether to fuse or fold back together and instead curled inward underneath your own spine like a rose crushed in a fist, only the fist forgot to show up and roses don't grow in hospitals. some days, love, you are almost radioactive enough to be a half-life. i think this is the saddest thing of all because on those days i find myself believing you might just make it.

 you must swallow your heartache softly, sore-throat, lest it should ignite this tongue with sparks of passion. oh, nobody said it wouldn't burn a hole from pharynx to trachea - but i promise you this, heart: the acidity of confession will sting your eyes more than the sight of her ever could. (so gulp down the nausea and hold fast)

i. she must have been a beacon, off-colour orange glass, tilted, splitting herself in two - he wonders how many times she has melted only to reshape herself anew, each sinew a promise snapped in two, each smile a dying candle. ii. learning to catch fireflies in jars is an art form of trailing sparks down strong shoulders and weak collarbones. they burn, his lips and fingers scorched but he drowns in her light; together they paralyze behind glass. iii. if the universe was formed from dancing spirits, they'd be entwined orange flames creating light for each other in a world of darkness.

i swallowed the earth; let it stick in my throat, wondering if comets are the tears of stars - a lonely kind of beautiful. oh, the shadowed angel of my dreams must have stolen their grief and made it her halo, those stone lips cold but perfect. like cruelty was not in her blood but was her blood and every time sharp asteroid edges cut her skin, she bled ice instead of liquid. i must have been the rings of Saturn, orbiting this resplendent being of no kindness and no grace. (and the chill bites earth making the screams echo)

got your voice in my head, words etched; fingers pressed - your pale palms were warmer than liquid goldlight. bright-eyes, are you scared for me or of me? i know my words speak harsh but they hit soft, my secrets are not your burden to bear after all - please don't cry, see i've been promising my windowed life i'll stop looking from the outside-in but you made me realise that first i have to break the glass to re-build. too long, i've been asking if these wounds will make me or break me but now i know it is time to decide on an answer.

i. a twisted bone, a tail feather and two broken wings do not give us flight - an echo in the wind is asking why we are not making ourselves crows, falling to somewhere that is nowhere, oh, these blades of grass are worth more than this life yet still i freeze in the wind's breath and wait for you. (i can't say i love you, i don't know what love is) ii. we trace our veins in reverse, all unmarked skin, invisible scars and devoid of our own reality. (tide said to the moon                             undo me) iii. we are ashes of our embers; a blank-slate, a swallow's mouth inhaling regret - i remember her as the seeds of no-growth, as