Dearly beloved,

When the fight got harder than the prize, built up on the pedestal, painted like a setting sun, wrapped up in your sweater on the near-seventh of may; Taking all the good bits and hiding the emotion, you tell the girl in purple that you've figured out the potion. It's balanced, flowing lightly, like the window you are working, playing all her songs on shuffle, on the sabbath, like you're churching. Summer wind storms quieted on permanent vacations, when you've signed up for a riot but you're questioning  summation. You left me drinking down remover, trying to remove the cause. I left you sitting with a sharpener, filing up and down your claws. The church bells woke me yesterday and I watched the hallowed sky, but you couldn't tell me anything, so I gave you the wings I built you to fly.

Give yourself another shot to find a target worth the chase, and pick the flowers that I planted because the texture matched your face. Despite the colors of their petals, spring can't save their grace and what a waste of innocence to let them wither in a vase. Their season ended while the world was twisting round about, and though you think you smell them still, their scent is all worn out.

If you burn the pages of the book and keep the dusty ash, you can plant them in the garden or throw them in the trash. You can let them give into the earth and grow as something else, so that you can go and I can go and we can be ourselves.