"the borrowers"

Today
A nostalgic turn led me to your doorstep.
My intentions were never
my intentions.
This metallic taste won’t go away, love.
So let me explain.

You.
These freshly unwrapped promises of
our broken bodies in disquise.
I was a sucker for your melody.
and
You were dying to live.
So we reached out. It was
a head-on collision
our beautiful words spun and crashed
smashed together
together I thought.
My soul would float on easy words.
I dreamt of something kept. It was beautiful
to feel beautiful
again.
And when sleep
didn’t come for me anymore, there was
my head, cradled in the device to hold my brain in place.
I was wired to forgive
But instead
I forgot.

You.
And your lowercase name.
I regret ever having left my house without my bag of tricks.
This time I was
afraid.
I saw monsters, ghosts, liars
dancing in the dark outside my small window
(the tiny square of light that was allowed to shine)
how was I to know this was an invitation to something
I wasn’t invited to?
I came around less.
Instead stayed
where I should have been hiding all along.
But when you did lead me out
my eyes were squinted tight
so I wasn’t blinded by all that you held.
This time the warning signs were bright and
yellow and
true and
I never danced with your sweet chance.

You.
You would forget to notice beautiful days.
You claimed you could hear innocence in my voice.
I was your puppet,
my walls so eagerly let down for anyone with even the faintest knock.
I was built for your eyes,
The Bully
The Beast
The Unreachable.
“It’s safer this way” but
this is never safe.
Those empty words reached too far within me, and were filled with hope.
You were my favorite
at the time
for what it’s worth.
So wounded in this dark corner, the light couldn’t reach. I could
not move.
The knives stuck out too far and would slice my skin if I tried.
And baby, I did try. Until I gave up.
And soon I Forgot.

You.
You held your candle high
when nothing like that mattered to anyone but us.
You were there
when the starving felt good
again. Held my dreams underwater where they couldn’t breathe
to stay alive. The clovers,
crushed by Our heavy backs
didn’t keep their promise either.
I never did see your eyes.
They probably weren’t
Blue.

But you.
How did our lips ever find each other?
It’s the one thing
I never forgot.