She bends and bends
and never breaks.
I leave her be and watch her grow,
from a room with no door.
Liquid beads appear painted on,
but the reality is far more tragic.
I embrace her appetite for dirt
with little need for explanation,
and caress her stem with fingers
softly made of glass.
She bends and burns
and rarely breaks.
She poses for poems, hidden beside
the plastic vase, burning another leaf
into ashes, spread out under
my feet, a harmless candle flames
ashes under the sea.
Her fingers are shaped like thorns
that conspire to bring down
my spine, frigid and flexible,
sharp as the shape of a book,
completely updated and out-of-print,
for the sunlight we wasted.
She bends and breathes
and often breaks.
I share my soul so she can breathe,
and wait for weeks to see her smile
in the fading glow of evening, with
kisses bleached in morning,
a devotion planted in soil,
not buried.
Something about this scar
feels fake and unstable.
She bends and bends
and always breaks.
I come here every night
to watch her die.
I place my heart in her aroma,
and sit alone amidst the ghost
of her scent, a broken dream
fixed in her memory.
A heart in the shape of forever
grows slowly in stone.
I leave my gift to her beside
her bed: a love that bends
and never breaks.
