Pyres of intent

Too often hearing the words, moving despite them, closer to harm

for creatures who learn early, love comes with a burn

take it away, repair nothing, leave the year a ring in wooded recall

teach the child the brittle end, let her expect rejection as her pinnacle

you made a tragic art form, blown glass with foggy lies

years spent in devotion count for less than bags of garbage when tepid hearts decide

“we’re over you we’ve used the last drop

it’s time to move on

we won’t idle in the odor of regret

we don’t know how to feel it, miss it, hurt

we are the savagery of after thought

the futility of error seen when all is done

we are the person you poured everything into and found was made of holes

no more able to contain than pages of a story left to drown”

you are cold that leaches in through unseen cracks, til rooms are bare of comfort

sharp motions in night when strangled by insights fury come too late for action

rise of sorrow on a day leached of light, the deepest cut out of sight

you are the sting of salt on eternal wound

sky without the moon closed to bereavement

a generation of rebuke playing like tindered sticks in my head

the one violent regret impossible to mend

you stand vain and empty with everything and nothing

would that I could pull down the sky and wrap you in its void

retrace the steps that led us to pile choice upon choice in anguished folly

I’d swap us for each other, you’d stand in mud, sinking beneath your sorrow

now try to run, better we stay and feel the aftermath bathing our faces expressionless

like the snow from Hiroshima or dust of moths wiped on old bulb

flaking morsels of battle where only one had a sword

you will own your mistake as I shall reinvent my regret

the next time I’ll bring to the table a half struck match

and you, if you are combustible, we shall make pyres of intent

let you turn to cinders before you ever drove the blade in