midnight elegy (the stars cannot shine without you)

there are holes in our hearts, and they bleed tangerine juice--

sweet upon tongues, sticky on fingertips;

carve me into the effigy of an angel and let me sit atop your altar,

keeping you company even when words fail and the night closes in;

for if you ever look for me, my love, look beyond the place where darkness falls,

where the twisted wraiths burn temples to our brokenhearted brothers,

lost in the dusky nothingness and the thick smoke that fills our lungs,

rendering us to ashes, falling softly to ruin, crumbling to pieces at your touch;

i’m here, my love, no matter how many times the sun sets;

you can find me between the lines of a well-worn book, dog-eared on all the wrong pages,

rushed notes scribbled in the margins in a heavy crimson ink--

is it blood? i do not know, and you seem unwilling to tell--

and our bodies intertwine, two hearts singing the same song,

two mouths breathing the same air, one mind saying the same words,

words like ‘i love you’ and ‘i know’, ‘i’m here’ and ‘i’m not going anywhere’,

snippets of truth and fractured freedom and promises that shall never truly be broken;

for not even the darkness that spans us can separate our souls, not even the

slippery sirens singing songs of silence and shattering sorrows

shall send us back to whence we came,

because together, we are whole;

this is an elegy to the brokenhearted,

to the dreamers,

to the wonderers,

to those who live in the shadows,

to those who feel as though the world may just swallow them whole

and spit them out, chewed, chained, chastised, into hell

to burn in halfhearted rapture and manic sorrow for the rest of their days.

this is an elegy to you, my love, and to me, and to us;

perhaps even the stars fade away, my love,

yet we will not,

for it is not our earthly time to depart;

breathe me in, our hearts in sync,

our lips whispering frantic prayers to some unknown deity--

one who may never answer our calls,

but what have we to lose but ourselves--

and follow me through the darkness.