nobody burns their poetry anymore.

used-up words crinkle like lightning, a path of moonlight on the ocean is deceiving.

and yet i set it all ablaze, the arsonist i’ve always wanted to be

praying for a phoenix to emerge from my smoke signals

and you cough on the ashes of everything i used to be,

but i’m not offended, it was all sharpie on bus windows,

rorschach tests of mascara stains, bottled tears displayed in glass cases.

you said you lay on empty streets and dream of cars

and i told you i’m collateral damage.

i thought you were just a hollow poet,

brain-dead from fake-deep tumblr posts

so, i said go ahead and worship all your fake gods, carve their veins into marble, cut the flowers off at their stems

and leave them to die, you can’t swallow stars in your sleep anyway—

you were crying.

and i thought about how you cry in bass clef

     but i cry in treble.

our lives are just symphonies in a minor key

and you’re just a girl on the other side of the mirror.

we still dream of hot air balloons in the summertime.

we still slip messages into glass bottles and set them in the sea.

i fall in love with impermanence every day, and you scowl 

because i’m lying to you and you know it,         i’ve regretted everything i’ve let go.

but you stay even when i don’t want you to.

i can’t stand the thought that i’ve spent all these years

desperately grinding my own bones into dust,

becoming a desert of myself

only to realize i am still

the same.