**Your shadow lingers where light used to be,**

haunting my steps with your presence—

half real, half imagined.

Always behind me,

but never actually with me.

Your shadow.

My shadow.

They slow dance with one another,

yet the music stopped playing a long time ago....

It watches as your body rots, patient and still—waits for you to decompose into its thieving hands. It wants to claim what’s left of you.

It wants **you. **

It’s waits as the light fades from your eyes, as your skin turns pale. Maybe if you hadn’t taunted it, killed it, tortured it— you would’ve been spared. Set free? Maybe if you hadn’t hurt them they would’ve felt pity, shown mercy.

But eve...

**Red roses and bloody noses.**
Petals drift,
regrowing in your wounds.
It waits—clogging veins.
White roses blush red with your bright blood.

Your skin, porcelain pale,
drains under their hunger.
They won’t let you breathe or rest.

**Red roses and bloody noses.**
They die inside you,
around you.

You’ll die with them.

No more white roses blooming red,
no more blood like a waterfall.

Goodbye, ...

I learned to love you like the rain:

sudden,

cold,

necessary.

Your love fell sideways, never quite where I stood. If it wasn’t for the comfort, I’d be swallowed whole by the spiraling storm.

Silence devoured me.

Silence sounded like you:

cruel,

still,

always lingering.

Silence was soft, yet you wore it as a disguise.

I bared my teeth—yellow, rotting from the inside out, corroded by ...

My ribs tap out morse code that I’m unable to transcribe—unable to access.

Maybe it says I miss you, or I’m not coming back.

Or simply it’s telling me to run until I can’t catch my breath—can’t catch a break to get back to sleep, and try to forget about you.

The ceiling fan spins like your excuse—your apologies—used to.

I’ve memorized the rhythmic pattern of collapsing.

Even the faucet drips...

Sunflowers face where the sunshine goes, but I nestle where the dandelions grow. And although my tears wet the soil, I stomp the dirt down and bury it in my soul. Watching me decompose into its thieving hands, all I can do is wait. Wait as my bloody and bruised body becomes food for the worms, food for the critters. 

Dandelions surround my once free self, encasing it in its own version of a web. ...

Even your decay was divine to me—**sweet as spoiled wine. **My lips understood your polished collarbone better than any vow—tracing slow, scared, aching to be felt back.

Your ribs sang in splinters, and I hummed along with my teeth gnawing on your ghost. It didn’t hurt you, yet you bled. Laughing like a wound unstitched, wearing your dignity like perfume.

You smiled with bones.

Touched me in...

All the pretty angel boys are nothing but grotesque. Their wings wilt velvet-black beneath the light, stitched smiles too tight, and love like glass—sharp, soft, and broken best. 

They’ll never live up to the beautifully defined—only the broken and bruised. He’d learned that much. And hearing unapologetic words—even the half-assed apologetic ones—seared his mind like branded wings: **a punishment...

**What do you want me to say?**
That I was wrong? _You_ were right?
My hands tremble, filled with panic.
My legs bounce, encased with dread.
And my eyes are flooded and blurry.

Why are you running wild through my veins?

Was it my fault for letting this go on?
Would I have fought harder—kicked my way to the surface—if I had understood?
Would I not have let myself slip beneath the waves?

You pois...

The angel moved just enough for him to notice. A slight turn of their fingertips as if a string is attached to each, tugging softly. It wanted to be seen as human, but it could never be. The movement was too fluid, yet it was too heavy to be divine. 

The pretty angel boys were nothing but an afterthought. Now though? They are his worst nightmare. 

His nightmare was simply only a hum—low, constan...