u/AncientMalice

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

Papers and planners line the walls
  Where your photos used to be
A ticket from a movie
  That we never got to see
The smell of smoke and cinder
  And that ashtray, copper-stained
The memory of the time
  When we lay here while it rained

Now I can see
  The desk's surface deep below
Cracked and dented from the force
  Of your every tiny blow
The splinters in the wood
  Peak beneath the faded gloss
The patches in the carpet
  And the scraps you meant to toss

You could have asked, I would have been there
  If you told me, if I knew
I would have given anything—
  Dropped everything for you
You never let me in
  There were fences in your eye
But at least I got to hold you
  On the night you chose to die

The night the house was flooded
  With the blue and white and red
I held you to my heartbeat
  But you bled and bled and bled
I gripped your golden hair
  Felt your anguish, felt your pain
As you faded into nothing
  But another carpet stain

1 2

Corporate dialogue—entrenched in sweat and tears
Gossip bursting out among the effervescent fears
Where the children could have been—a hole of deep regret
Now we swim in rivers deep while never getting wet

What was the life our mothers wished for us to climb into
A place much worse than theirs in every way but being new
How the nails of timeless grace now sharpened to a claw
How they pick and pry in every place we find a flaw

But now we have security—it's ours and ours alone
No god can tell me what is right, no purse or golden throne
And of the young who should have been the best of what's to come
From them hear no crying, no demands—no hurry home