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Description
1. Your hair was a tangled silver mass leaking sun-kissed strawberry from the tips.
I used to watch it glisten through wreaths of smoke,
and you'd watch me watch you with bleary eyes
the color of frost-bitten spring skies.
You'd smile that crooked smile,
and drop your cigarette,
and I'd scoop it up
to save the dried grass from igniting.

I want those days back.

But I'm secretly glad those memories are stuffed in a grainy mess
in a dust-covered brown box
with the label from the mortuary
peeling at the sides.

2. There were days where I'd let the pale blue warmth of the monitor
warm my frozen, half-naked form,
and I'd pretend it was your warm breath,
and I'd breathe it in, trying to ignore the stench
of cigarettes, and the alcohol you must have consumed .
You wrapped yourself around the pride you felt
from convincing a 15 year old girl to do vulgar things
in the sake of 3 abused words shortened to chat-speak:

"i luv u"

3. So maybe I am hyper-critical.
I read your invisible fault lines like the creases of your palm,
and revel in the thought that I could dismember you
with serrated words
in a matter of minutes.
But I don't.
And I wield this fact like a shield
to thwart your judgments far away from me.
I watch you trip
and skin your knees
and pretend not to have noticed that crack in the sidewalk,
and raise myself to hero-status by offering a hand
and some antiseptic I was carrying with me
by chance.

The sad fact is, I'm so much less than you
for using your fault lines like footholds
to climb to the top.

Description
1. Your hair was a tangled silver mass leaking sun-kissed strawberry from the tips.
I used to watch it glisten through wreaths of smoke,
and you'd watch me watch you with bleary eyes
the color of frost-bitten spring skies.
You'd smile that crooked smile,
and drop your cigarette,
and I'd scoop it up
to save the dried grass from igniting.

I want those days back.

But I'm secretly glad those memories are stuffed in a grainy mess
in a dust-covered brown box
with the label from the mortuary
peeling at the sides.

2. There were days where I'd let the pale blue warmth of the monitor
warm my frozen, half-naked form,
and I'd pretend it was your warm breath,
and I'd breathe it in, trying to ignore the stench
of cigarettes, and the alcohol you must have consumed .
You wrapped yourself around the pride you felt
from convincing a 15 year old girl to do vulgar things
in the sake of 3 abused words shortened to chat-speak:

"i luv u"

3. So maybe I am hyper-critical.
I read your invisible fault lines like the creases of your palm,
and revel in the thought that I could dismember you
with serrated words
in a matter of minutes.
But I don't.
And I wield this fact like a shield
to thwart your judgments far away from me.
I watch you trip
and skin your knees
and pretend not to have noticed that crack in the sidewalk,
and raise myself to hero-status by offering a hand
and some antiseptic I was carrying with me
by chance.

The sad fact is, I'm so much less than you
for using your fault lines like footholds
to climb to the top.