• On the day we lost your luster,
    I also lost my lust for you.
    Plain circles of blue inclouded your smile,
    And your eyes became nothing more than irises.
    Not that you looked particularly extravagant in the first place.

    Butterflies didn’t fly out from the forest of your eyelashes every time you looked out at me.

    The first day we met, you had to force-feed me animal crackers
    In that clouded- yet, never crowded- room of white,
    Where you found that smiles make me say the strangest things.
    Maybe I hated you. Maybe I loved you.
    Monster, oh monster, you taught me to lust.

    Lust for more. Lust for the life that lived on the outside of those thick, dwelling walls.

    You liked to talk about your mother.
    Mother who loved you and held you in her hands.
    Not quite like mine, yours was reverently breathing
    In the next room, breathing to the beat of my breath.
    Inhaling in all the insane, exhaling out exuberance.

    Eating the feast of flabby, wobbling food that moved to the same rhythm as our breathing.

    It was all okay, since she loved you. Deep. And you loved me. Deeper.
    And I loved you. Dark. Larger than life, stranger than fiction.
    Raining kisses of sugarless sorbet, colorful like shattered glass. Pretty.
    Pretty flawed.
    What on earth were you doing with me?

    Orders were for you to stand outside of my door, escort me down the hall, and move me motionless.

    Orders never consisted of whispered smiles, or showing me what worth consisted of.
    My first worth that wasn’t made of connect-the-dots: red string, yellow parchment.
    Cotton-sewed words of comfort, sung with a silk voice of simple-minded truth.
    “Please. Thank you. Awe-striking.”
    were not a part of the required vocabulary;

    Your vocabulary was anything but required, mundane, or contrived.

    Inspiring would be closer to base.
    Base. Basis. Lies.
    Not really lies, but definitely lacking some truth.
    Thankfully, truth was not the heart of the matter;
    Truth was just a side-note.

    Your teeth tasted like Haloperidol coated in cough syrup, spreaded in salt, seasoned with sour substances.

    Bitter fruit.
    Glazed kite strings.
    Lost paradise.
    Quivering understanding.
    Verifiable zippers unzipping,

    We always chased delusions hidden inside gestures. Mimicking nothing, only bathing in rivers of skin. Sin.

    How many ways can you retell the story?
    Lips humming lullabies, tongues tied together, basically breathing- or wait, was it barely?
    Memory might be mighty or it might be monotonous. Definitely flaking.
    Each option leaves us frantic. Or freaking. Or freaking out frantically for new ties of truth.
    Except that we have dismissed truth as a luxury and thrown it into irrelevance. Chance.

    Some people are born without the luxury of chances, and maybe you were one of them. But I doubt it.

    Class. Conversations. Conversions. Church. Camp. Crap.
    Consistent cravings for the one “c” word that I cant have, that could kill me,
    Replacing it with another “c”. You.
    Could you see what I saw, crankiness set aside; crankers and craziness pushed away?

    I saw nothing, and I lived in deep gray normality. I saw you and lived in white. Bright white.

    White I called lithium.
    White you called love.