Lost by
this is the light that catches you, spider-web eyelashes, as you try to leave the room. you say these things like, "I didn't mean to understand, I only want to layer". layer like paint, thick and suffocating. you say he was distance but that's only your excuse for not being able to breathe. still you're attracted to this room. to the cheap, yellow wallpaper the color of dandelions at the end of the summer. dead and peeling. you like this building's crumbling. you feel like part of a history. but this is not the Coliseum.
so you think he could be Romeo if this was some foreign, ancient, play - and you don't forget the tragic demise but rather the self-destructing vanity. then later as the walls start to close in like a box with too much gift-wrap you begin to realize that escape is impossible when you've taped yourself in from the outside. your own body is so constricting and your skin is much too thick.
you are a finder of lost things. umbrellas without handles that you hold by their rigid metal frames, looking like ancient lamps or your grandmother's hands. if it rained any harder they would break, but as it is the both of you just manage to survive.
once you found a bookmark in a libary, graffiti on the back of a bathroom door, a dime about to be swallowed by the sewer. you keep these things in your mausoleum. your bedroom is a crypt for all that is dead and beautiful. your life is pressed flowers.
you left him because he could not be found. his hands were too empty, like Mason jars after the fireflies have disappeared and you don't know if it's because you let them go or if they suffocated and were buried in the fragile grass at the bottom. you first discovered him like a scaly lizard under a warm rock in the desert, and you asked him if the rain hurt his skin. he was walking as it hit the cement, hot tears in the summer. you offered to share your umbrella and he laughed at it.
"what are you doing with something like that?
it's broken."
and he was right.
