Analysis of Terrible Roses

still I remember the way I dipped my feet into the cold pool; timidly, like eggshells were pinned beneath my toes. how your eyes poured over— when I said I wanted to die; your cheeks trembling, teardrops slithered like the dark part of a star’s insides.  in this life, we become what we can’t hold, you said.  you said the earth is for those who consume themselves.  
your hair glinted by the crisp blue water. when you were wringing out your towel, and leaving it to dry before walking inside, I thought your body was a scroll on which the angels wrote I love you.  

and three weeks later, we were sitting at  Buffalo Wild Wings.  our favorite place to watch the world unfurl.   I was hiding my wrists. you spoke like a goddess with paper-white teeth.  you said, what despair eats your bones tonight? I couldn’t tell you; I couldn’t even pinpoint this stranded vocabulary.  

then, the next week, I was hospitalized.  My wrists covered in barren scars; the nakedness of artificial light beamed down upon them.  you, in shock, tears slithering down the trembled cheek.  you’d visit me everyday in the facility; a broken light flitting your hair.  I tried to say you’re beautiful, but the shakiness of my hands only spelled out help.  you shouldn’t cry, dear, I thought. I’d relieve your burden.  

after two months and four days, i was finally okay.  the pills began kicking-in, and the sun a little sharper on my skin.  my hands didn’t slur my mouth anymore, and the first place you took me was Buffalo Wild Wings.  we watched the football game our team lost in.  but I smiled enough, I think.  I showered you in the words a man waits a lifetime for. I said I must fish in the garden of your spirit; I must rewrite my name on your hips; you are the only person God sings to.  you are the light of the earth, and the bud of the moon that saves it.  

when we drove home, I kissed your hand like a man who’s rewarded the stars he didn’t deserve.  I waited, impatiently, for the trees to melt under the bruised black sky.  and when it came, it was an ending.  it was me, slipping into the medicine cabinet, my hands  finally stilled; but inside me, a rose crumbled.  inside me, that night you held heaven in your palms.  that strange
voice you lowered all the languages of earth into.  then, as if the eyes no longer were steel, and the ears, no longer blessed by lilting tongues…

at my grave you placed a bouquet of white roses.  your face painted yellow by a lucid sunlight.  but it was funny— you were tearless.  your voice hushed to that low
hum a poem is.  your eyes peeled back to visceral layers— the kind that reveals the meat of the spirit.  

listen: I’m haunting you. can you unlock the portal to your arms? will you sew me a new skin to wear? are you there, dear? did you ever find your Eden? I am banging on the floor of our attic; I am saying you are beautiful again.  you cannot hear me,
but I’m screaming.