a flame life snuffed out.

You said you were ashamed
when I found you on the floor
with bruises on your arm
and a small puddle of your blood
beside your fading tan.


This isn't who you wanted to be
and you remembered being young,
before all of your used dreams,
before all of reality struck a chord
inside of you.


You opened up to me in October
and made me promise to remember
that there was good in you and that
someday you'd find it.


I kept your dream inside of me
as if it were all I had;
your greatest gift,
my greatest need.




I remember Autumn and the way
you smiled in your bed,
unfed and unwed.



"Forgive me." you said
and I brushed the hair out of your face
and said, "There's nothing to forgive."





Loving you is what I remembered
and what lingers most in the deep undertow
of our current is the silence,
the silence and the way you burned
from the inside out like a flame
life snuffed out.