I love you when

Your delicate hands strum and pluck at

The strings of the guitar that

Your ex gave to you.

I love you when

Your sun-kissed skin glistening

Under the afternoon,

Hips swaying as free as the palm trees.

But I can’t love you,

For the fear that

You will slip through the fingers

That never even knew how to hold myself.

But I can’t love you,

As learning to forgive you

Has become a price too hefty for my barren pockets.

But I can’t love you because

I cannot afford

To lose

Something that I never had.

But I want to love you,

For I live in solitude with a stranger

That I was once so familiar with,

But has since become

Estranged.

He stares into my eyes when I

Look into that damn mirror every morning.

His eyes are the void of thoughts

That he wished once to say to the world

But no longer.

For he realized everyone tried,

Tried to help

Tried to love

Tried to accept.

For he had “matured,”

And realized that he was just never meant to speak in this

dark, twisted fantasy

Where everything we do is wrong.

I have since killed him.

No, he chewed himself to death.

So, I can’t love you.

But maybe we should just tell ourselves a good lie, that love is endless. Maybe that will get us to love our wretched selves that find solace in the endless waves of phantom pain, leaving us clutching our chest trying to hold on to that last memory of when you were truly happy. Only to realize it’s all futile and the only way to escape the pain that “never even existed” is to leave its dimension, even if meant our flesh and blood ceases.

I can’t love you.

I can’t.

I can’t love the way that your hair beautifully

Rests upon your shoulders.

I can’t love the way that you hold your chin up  to those who wish to see you gone.

I can’t love the way you walk.

I can’t love the way you cry.

I can’t. But I want to.