when you lose your old self.

goodbyes flicker like candles on a solitary birthday cake. your lipstick stains on my shoulders feel like a jacket pulled over to hide the scars. just like those marks I always had, there was a permanent —

dream.

an iridescent glow of a home I'd come back to. you raised my bars seven feet higher, running past the musky heavens. you loved my face, my arms, my weak parts. losing you was such sorrow.

-- such sweet sorrow. I tangle with stars for you're nowhere near me now.

you were the girl of my dreams. you felt like hot coffee on winter mornings, soft warmth of that lap I wouldn't dare abandon on cold afternoons. you were the smoke that raised from the fireplace and clutched like wool to my skin.

the girl i lost to the wrath of time all too soon.

my arms are frozen with the age of time. my mind doesn't grow, my wit doesn't stir. you withered with the gloom brought by the 3am rains. my beer cans are filled with flavoured echoes. my desk is weighed down by lost voices, now turned into books.

all the history and earth sciences in me accumulate like Achille's heels. one shot of an arrow and I'm a nobody. instant death of one part of that wisdom in me at times. break a thousand bows but I still won't recover. you're the air I inhaled that never left my lungs; the treasure chest my ribs carried.

although, no map would ever lead me to you. you're lost and never found. i could have my flesh rummaged to get through to you but nails cannot dig any deeper. no-more.

I've lost you to the mesh of wires my dreams cultured. they have your dried blood on them. I'll never have you back. I shriek while my heart and body trembles over your photograph. I pick a rose and leave by the earth spasming around your bones; you are no more than that holed robe of a soul, searching for life in another world.

classroom windows don't open, chalks don't make that stealth noise on slates. my pen doesn't click like the one over a prodigy's notes.

so I know it's not you that I'm owning.

baby, I've lost you since :

I'm not dreaming.

images aren't mine. ctto!!