Chewing on the Stairs

I read the poetry in your silence. It doesn't rhyme. And I won't try to make it do that.

No more catching bullets with my lips. Forgetting how to say what's always been waiting to be heard. Ignoring trigger. Telling you I fell apart not because.

I steal the poetry from your silence. Like taking petals off of dead flowers. Pasting them onto a new stem.

You waste it everything you're given. Like you don't care. But I know you do. You tell it all to go away because you think it's leaving you.

I see the poetry in your anguish. One man alone with his questions. Every answer hidden in a beautiful girl. One who will never let him see.

I read the poetry in your silence. I cull my own from those same roots. I'd hate you if I could, but instead I jut find myself languishing in your delusion.

That life can be framed. Hung like a photograph. Ours to stare upon while nothing happens.

You think you've been burned when you haven't even struck the match.

I read the poetry in your silence and I pity you. For all my sorrow, I've still owned the things you never have.

I'm only biting the stairs. Angry and docile. Because I'm always confused about how I should feel. While you ride an elevator that doesn't go anywhere. Waiting to go some place it can't ever take you.

I wish you knew. Or that I could show you. The poetry in your silence. How you look from the outside. Another shell pretending the ocean. Making the sound and nothing else. Another person with nothing left to love.

I never wanted to change you. Only wanted to show you how I felt. I guess I did. If this silence knows us as well as it contends.

I'll chase you like the horizon does the sun. Until every last bit of light is gone. And even then it won't have to be far until we'll meet again.

You sold me. But it's my fault for not asking a higher price to begin with.

You sold me and now we're trying to figure out how much it was worth.

We'll know someday when we've measured this against other treasures.