There's always a thing about my dreams

when they're about you.

Like a neatly folded regret inside

the memory-stained shoeboxes.

We were on the porch,

trees and flower pots;

The smell of paint spilled from your shirt,

and escaped into the air.

You were holding my hands, and like

another burst of firecrackers — you weren't there.

Oh, James, you tuck my heart's string in your fingertip

and dipped it raw red until the rain stopped.

But there's always been a color lingering,

in the withering monochrome palette.

It's there as the coffee stain on the collar of your shirt,

It's there as the last stroke on my oil canvas,

It's there on my window where trees spill star secrets,

on the winter roads, tall oaks, and buzzing cafes.

A whiff of it lingers everywhere around—

so blissfully aching my fingertips,

even today.

It feels so easy to twist one's heart

that writes about heartache and fading embers;

Maybe that's how the land's learned to crack.

I wish you knew all my dreams

and how dew-tangled heartbeats my heartbeats were

When we were in love.

It's another embroidered vintage cloth I had

sealed in a wine bottle and kept inside the box.

The burnt red shacks forge poems of runaway

and how young we were when we crossed the moon-slicked puddles

Without worrying about what was yet to come.

We had a gentle breeze following us,

more like a song and less like a siren.

But we were wrong.

Those neatly-folded regrets and aches remained

under the thick fog and unhomely houses.

Never count them on, for they

were the chewing bubblegum that you used to

throw into the trash once done.

They never screamed or cried,

Battled or bruised—

they were another gentle bloom

in your rotten muscles and my decayed teeth.

I wish they could make the walls around you

cave in and make you feel absolutely nothing.

Sometimes, I wish they could dress like revenge and stumble

upon your life like a creeping shadow

and howl like they were to.

It's already winter, darling.

Throw on your trench coat, and call me again.

I won't mind if you break me up this time

for the land has started to crack,

and the embers have died cold.

There's a silver of air that's

fuelled my lungs to breathe.

How ironically poisoned our thing is that even

when we want to give up, we break each other up.

Yet we reside in the same part of the town

and spill blood all over the floor.

Tonight, meteorites have busted my heart open.

Auric red poetries and melted melancholy.

The lullabies never stop here for once

for they know that I'd break them up

just like you had.

The lighter's waiting, dear.

I've got to go; the folded regrets are freezing way more.

I just have to tear my bare limbs in marigold aches,

petal by petal, until everything speaks its last breath.