I met you in the hush between

two pages creased with longing.

You stepped from ink, a burning thing,

more real than those who haunt my morning.

You spoke in lines not meant for me,

yet I read them like a prayer,

each glance you gave some other name

was mine to wrongly bear.

You live where lanterns never dim,

where storms are poems, blood is grace.

I chase you through a thousand words

and never see your face.

I know your scars, your secret truths,

the way you kiss when no one's near.

You've killed, you've wept, you've almost died

but never learned I'm here.

How cruel to love what cannot love,

to ache for breathless dream and script.

To trace the shape of every vow

upon a lover’s lips.

Yet still I turn each battered page,

and hope you somehow change your fate,

escape your death, return my gaze,

step through the spine, and wait.

Perhaps you’d take my trembling hand,

and say what stories never do:

I saw you too, beyond the end.

I’ve always looked for you.