the art of loving you

seventy four.

hair whips in my eyes,
stained red and black
(no, not like les misérables)
but like something similar,
and i could blame the
tears on the wind but i've
never been much of a liar.
headlights flicker like stars
lost on land, as we all
rush to find our way home
to a place that exists
solely in our lonely minds.
my foot on the accelerator
could carry me down this
empty road until asphalt
turns to rubble turns to dirt,
and i know this journey will
lead me to the place i need
to be, if i wasn't so goddamn
afraid of finding it.

space bears down on me
even after i escape its sight,
and instead of screaming my
lungs bloody at the violet
bruised stars that leak magenta
into the nebula they never
really called home, my shaky
hands curl deadly around the
object of my creation through
destruction. bristles more
prickly than i am do nothing
to avoid their fate of
suffocating under my rage
and the ink stained paints
that are the closest thing to
hell on earth and my cheapest
form of therapy.

it's amazing, truly, how much
raw emotion a flimsy canvas
can handle being flung upon it,
and they say life imitates art,
as if the rough fabric disappearing
under layers of tears and space
tinted ink is just as human
(just as suffering) as i am.

and i remember how the world
looked when i looked at it
through your eyes, the way
the stars reflected themselves
so clearly in the glassy blue surface
that they almost looked as though
they belonged there, as if the eyes
of some celestial goddess had been
planted in your head for me to
fall in love with. i remember this
beautiful world, and i scream it
into empty air and throw it out from
my brush, as if by forming
her hair and your face out of
cloudy purple nebulas that i
will finally be able to forget that
the world was painted into my
life the way you wanted, so that
i can finally remember that once
upon a time i believed that the
world i called mine was
a masterpiece all its own.

i shall reign eternal in this
kingdom called midnight,
and when you and she are
permanently immortalized in
flaxen paint and teardrop stars
in shades the color of my
bruised and beaten heart,
i turn attention to myself.
(this is a new phenomenon,
like a star shooting its way
out of the black hole that
ate it alive.) space may be
black and deep but i stain
myself yellow and orange and
pink; the colors of sunrise;
the colors of a galaxy that
someday, i shall be.