We Were A Walking Tragedy

We were a walking tragedy,
beautiful and completely insane in the way we professed our absolutes.
This dramatic “hold me forever” kind of sentiment.
The shit I always said I didn’t like,
But with you,
I was high and blurry-eyed,
so in love with the haze and romance of a disaster waiting to happen.
We liked getting drunk on whisky and poetry.
We drove for miles to find views of the city and places to speak candidly.
We were living journals, writing our secrets with fingernails and lips.
I would recite Pablo Neruda, and you traced my collarbone.
Honey-dew words and plans of San Francisco,
This artistic power couple,
coupled off in a corner of a coffee shop in Hollywood.

We were just lost kids,
hoping our bodies would become the compass.
We gained no direction,
only circled the same spot again and again.

I would recite
“I Carry Your Heart With Me,”
and you would sigh
and touch my tattoos.

You told me the first time you heard me recite one of my poems,
it was all you could think of for weeks.
I was tipsy,
on a bus and tripping over my own material,
looking at you and thinking,
“I want to know him.”

But we were a walking tragedy,
incomplete in our loss.
You are becoming less
and less
of a muse.

Eventually,
you will be nothing
only a memory.
And I am an ink stain
you covered with a new design.