This idea grew amid the fallen leaves, ashes
and things you would’ve tossed aside
if you didn’t know any better.
Sadly, most of us didn’t. We knew not
of the gold we sold to stragglers.

We wrote our hopes, dreams and deepest desires
in a notebook that we buried in the sand. We begged
for the ocean tide to wash it away,
so we could be left with a nautical nothing
to feel or worry about.

It was the kind of love that scorched the nostrils
and made hands shake when they weren't laced together.
A love like cholorform that, when overdone or
overwhelmed, could become deadly
but we ached for it anyway.

When the sun turned its burning back on us, we began searching -
looking for the fabric to fix ourselves
a bed of roses from a pile of leaves,
grass and garbage.

We found our motivation in the echo of a sorrowed voice
that we had only hoped would grow into a kind word,
and that it would become the hand
which extends and lifts us to happiness.
Every goodbye would bring us closer to tomorrow
and our next time together.

You looked at me as if you could tell
I was something beautiful (even behind the rags); kind of like a star
in a sea of strychnine
but everybody knows that most of the stars we see
are already dead, and that true love isn't the kind
that killing flowers will confirm.

Still,
We laid ourselves to rest on pillows of concrete,
washed the names of strangers off of our scraped palms,
and waited for the brighter stars among us to come into our homes
and light us on fire so we, too, could glow.