Something Witty

A pretty face and murky thoughts

I tell her it’s just growing pains

And you might not get any taller but you’ll feel a little more filled out in your skin

We might joke

Touched by fire

But when you’ve learned your voice can burn to ash

All those clouds above your past

Your blood will raze through your veins

and timid flesh will fall away

but unlike the phoenix the ashes you rise from will not be yours

but a story you will someday laugh as you tell yourself

The wall next to the entrance was covered in pictures. Him and his girlfriend at prom, when they moved in together, them at the hospital, and another hundred of him and his baby boy. This collage surrounding a child’s backpack, blue with a batman logo on the back. 

Finally, my attention closes on that little black box. Open now, revealing tissues, a little glass bottle and a needle that looks like it lost its seal a long time ago. I notice he’s been talking the whole time, telling me about his kid. He asked me if I mind if he shoots up in front of me. 

My stomach turns, I want to be a million miles from that room because I keep seeing faces I haven’t seen in years. A man I called big brother, a mother whose kids haven’t seen her since, a young girl caught up in some shit that’s bigger than she knows. 

I shook my head and he tells me he hates it, he looks at his kids backpack and tells me how disgusted he is with himself while he flicked the syringe. He told me he was getting clean after tonight while he pricked away trying to find a vein. It took him a few tries, he told me how much he misses his son. 

I wanted to tell him about those faces, I wanted to tell him how I miss them every day, how many times they told me we were going to get clean after this weekend, how they were taken too early, but while I stumbled on my tongue he pulled the plunger back and we both saw that little cloud of red. 

We will be ribbons of flesh and dust and no one will speak our names,

But we will live on through whispered words in lover’s mouths.

In nights of passion shared

In listless mornings laid bare in skin and truth.

Our minds will fail us love, our bodies cracked and frail,

But oh what peace it is to know our love will seep through the cracks in our bones.

It will burn its name upon time

And as the chaff of us is blown away new fruit will grow in any pair who choose to take up our fallen yoke.

Fear not my dear, we are not our brittle skin.

but oh my love we will keep his night sky burning bright until long after his soul has lost its sight.

Men will always look upon the stars and dream of angels,

and we will shine for their little dreams 

We are the stars my love