You hold my hands

Wrap the gauze around my bruised knuckles,

Whisper me pieces of words

For my mind to create

Into stained-glass portraits.

My love, I trust

That your strong vines

Will grow into roses

Unsnagged by the sharpest of thorns

Or the purest of shards.

 

You promised me a crystal lake,

Said if I were to be a fallen star

I’d land in a place to call home,

Enveloped in the sepal

Of your cold embrace.

A brick house

In a dying meadow

Where you promised

The grass would grow greener

If I believed it so.

 

You gifted me a diamond necklace

On a gold chain

That tightened around my neck

With each passing day as

Love’s most exquisite noose.

I wore your broken jewels,

Let them jab into my bones,

And you wiped away the blood

As you braided rose petals

Amidst my sun-drenched locks.

 

Grass dies as the rose petals

In my heart collect frost,

And I’m numb as the thorns

Embed themselves

In the bone, leaving scars,

As do you, snapping

Your vines with your

Crystal-crafted knife

From the mirror in which

You looked twice,

And I, once.

 

Glass is sturdy, but fragile,

And flowers burn

When stars fall without grace,

When they are expelled from the hearth

Of their love.

I watched you set our bridge aflame,

And my portrait’s glass

melted to raindrops,

but nothing turned damp.

 

My love, you lie

As skin does when its

Elasticity suggests refusal to break,

And your vines snapped

Under grief’s crushing weight.

Don’t ask me if I’m okay

As I land hard on the ashen stone

You called our home

And to you,

I was never a star.

 

Fire runs wild when

 You don’t control it,

Scorching those for which

Weeping won’t bring coolness,

But they turn frigid when

Love doesn’t warm them.

Your glass digs in whenever

It’s told to.

 My love, to you,

I’ve grown cold to.

 

For your promises were as empty

As the glass in which I drank them from.