I took a walk today 

and listened to the birds 

choking on the smog, 

broke my mother's back

with every step 

and outran a stray dog.

I picked you a bouquet 

of dandelions from the field

because flowers can't grow

when the sun's always concealed.

I put them in a vase

and filled it with water from the tap

they died within an hour, 

now I know for sure you won't come back.

I always swore 

I'd never own a broken home 

but it's hard not to when the only one's who stay 

are the garden gnomes —

but someone's been smashing them 

in the middle of the night, 

or maybe they're blowing out their brains 

to escape my company 

and the blight.

There's no magic left 

in this city, so chronically gray

storms are always passing though 

and the rainbows are too scared to stay...

I wanted to run away with you

from the hood and past the burbs 

to somewhere where the air is clean

and filled with singing birds.

But instead I'm stuck here on this couch, 

microwaving Ramen 

while I search for words. 

I can't write about you. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because you're more than a memory to me, and I can still hear the ghost of your love moaning in this little corner of my mind. It excites me, and scares me at the same time because I know it's a residual haunting, and your actual love has flown away to the great beyond into someone else's arms. But what you did while you were here marked the land of my soul forever, and that part of you will never leave. My emotions and hopes flood to this spot of my heart like tourists, hoping to catch a glimpse or a kiss from your beautiful apparition. 

I wish I could write you a sonnet, with all the frills and delicate rhymes so I could fold it up and place it on the grave I thought I had buried you in, and put an end to this haunting. But I can't. I've become too hard and I can't put a leash on my emotions. Nothing I ever write will be good enough to get rid of you. I could scorch the land of my mind with gallons of absinthe and light it all on fire with a thousand burning blunts flicked from my fingers, then lay down to shield myself from this mental explosion... only to look up, minutes after the blow and see you wandering between the flames, pushing them aside gently like silk curtains warm with the sun. 

I'll probably ask myself “where am I? ” and “who is that beautiful woman? ”.

I'd have no knowledge left of fire, and as I'd go to wrap my arms around your soulless impression from behind... I'd hug nothing but the flames and the smoke exuding from my mind, then fall to the ground and suffocate under the ash that once made up everything I am — my soul and heart and mind that will collapse under the weightless footsteps of a beautiful memory. 

But unlike you I'd actually be a ghost, Not a metaphor for one, as you're off in the real world loving and breathing. The world that I haven't set foot in since you left. I can't step back out there, I'm not sure why.