She Said

Salvation in the Shadows 

I am drawn to him like a moth to a flame,

knowing the burn will claim me. 

He is a prophet wrapped in his own wounds,

searching for salvation in 

the cracked mirror of his own mind. 

But the wine always calls him back,

its promise of peace laced with poison. 

I am his Eve,

naked beneath his gaze,

but there is no apple here,

only the slow rot of temptation. 

He paints me as if I were the last truth.

A divine vision he cannot grasp,

hands shaking with a need

too great for this world.

Each stroke is a prayer, 

but it is whispered to Gods

who never answer. 

I am both his muse and his cross,

his redemption wrapped 

in the curve of my back,

but the nails are already in place,

ready to pierce us both.

He says he needs me,

But I know that need is a hunger without end,

a thirst that grows only deeper the more he drinks. 

I see it in his eyes, 

that dark fire,

the kind that burns and does not save—

he loves me with a desperation 

that could only come from the damned. 

I cannot enter his temple now. 

The air reeks of matches and rot,

the smell of vodka seeping into the holy places

where we once touched,

where we once dreamed of something beyond this.

I fear that if I go,

I will be drawn into the same abyss,

that my salvation will be undone

by the sound of his fall.

I seem to always find myself in a state of “recovery,”

but how can I recover 

when his lips still taste of sin?

His love is a crucifixion,

and I am both the sinner and the sacrifice.

I miss him in ways that rend me,

in ways I cannot explain.

But I cannot lie beside him 

in the garden of his self-destruction,

not when I have seen the poison of his tongue,

the way his fingers quiver with the weight of his brokenness. 

I would be his salvation if I could, 

but I am not Christ,

and I am not strong enough to carry us both.

So I step away,

my footsteps echoing in the silence of my decision,

leaving  him to rot in the garden of his own making.

I place my hands together, as I was taught all those years ago,

and make a religious wish.

What they call a “prayer.” 

I pray he finds the strength to rise,

but I cannot kneel beside him anymore. 

For if I do,

I will be the Judas in the story—

The one who betrays my own soul 

for a taste of his despair.

And i cannot die again. 

…….

Your heart beats in colors 

no one else can name.

Fragile in places, torn in others. 

A life painted in shadows 

and unfinished lines. 

Your hands carry the weight of creation,

rough and calloused, 

yet delicate enough 

to breathe life into what others cannot see.

There is an ache between us,

a space where over three decades 

press against love,

trying to make it smaller. 

But love is not bound by time—

it stretches, bends,

fills the spaces you leave empty.

Grief lives in your chest,

a hollow place she carved out when she left.

And came back. 

And left, and came back,

a little different than before.

And left and came back, 

a little different than before.

And left once more, never to return again.

She, your anchor, 

now just a memory you chase

in bottles and broken nights. 

I see her in your silence,

in the way your hands tremble

when the past becomes too loud.

Without a home for so long,

that the idea of saying anywhere—

with anyone— feels foreign.

You carry the streets in your bones,

the cold in your veins,

and yet your Art is full of warmth,

as though you pour into it

what you cannot give yourself. 

I’ve held your hand in the quiet moments,

when the world seemed to pause,

and you felt like something whole. 

But the bottle is always waiting, 

pulling you back,

a tide you refuse to fight.

It’s killing me to watch 

you drink yourself to death,

to see the man I love unravel, 

day by day, pint by pint.

And the worry—it’s killing me too.

The wondering if each call, 

each silence, 

is the moment you slip away for good. 

I love you in the way that 

only someone who knows you fully can,

with all the pain, the ruin, the beauty. 

But love isn’t enough

to stop your hands 

from reaching for the glass.

It isn’t enough to unmake the grief

you’ve lived with for so long.

I stand here, breaking,

hoping you will choose to fight

for the man I see beneath the weight.

But the battle is yours,

and all I can do is wait,

as your destruction

slowly becomes mine,

wishing that one day,

you will find a way back to yourself,

to the masterpiece you’ve always been. 

•••••••

The Tender Ruin of Us

     There is a kind of love that grows not in the sunlight, but in the spaces between storms. Storms where the wind howls and the rain beats down, and yet the roots continue to hold firm beneath the earth. It is a love that does not ask to be nourished by warmth but instead thrives in the cold, in the quiet despair that settles like fog over everything. This love does not wait for the clouds to part but learns to live in their shadow, finding beauty in the way the light bends around the dark.

     I love him— so much more than words can carry, in a way that fills the spaces between breaths and stretches into the horizon of every unspoken moment. Loving him is like tending to a garden in the heart of winter, where the soil is frozen and the frost has claimed the petals. His years are like the rings of ancient tree, each one etched deeply into his skin, each one a chapter of pain and survival. A testament to the weight he has carried. His story is not one of light, but of shadows that stretch long and wide, of a life that has been weathered by grief, lonlienless and loss. The mother he lost lives in him like a ghost, a presence that cannot be excorsized, haunting every thought, every breath. The walls of his heart are built from the remnants of what was left behind..a place once whole, now shattered into pieces he’s never been able to reassemble.

     I love him with a depth that I cannot always put into words. But loving him is not a delicate thing. It is the sound of a storm at sea, the relentless crashing of waves against the rocks. Each part of him that is broken, calls to the parts of me that are too. There is a strange kind of kinship in the ruin, in the spaces between us where our wounds meet. But there is also a terrible truth: when you love someone in the wreckage, you cannot escape the wreckage. You are bound to it, as tightly as the tide is bound to the moon. And as much as I would give everything to pull him from the depths, to save him from the whirlpool he is drowning in, I know that the storm is his to weather.

     His trauma is the old wound, reopened by every step forward, the scar tissue never quite healing. It is a thunderstorm that churns in the sky, thick and black, and yet he finds himself walking in the rain, drenched, and shivering, never quite finding shelter. The loss of her was the first crack in the sky..a bolt of lightening that split him in two. It was a wound that carved itself deep into his chest, a hollow space no one could fill, not even time. He carries this grief like a weight, and though I reach for him, I cannot lift it. It as though I am holding his hand while the storm rages around us, both of us struggling to find solid ground beneath our feet.

     The homelessness that followed was like being adrift on an endless ocean. No shore ever appeared, no lighthouse ever pierced the darkness, and each wave carried him further and further from the place he sought. His search for “Home” was like a bird lost in the sky, circling without rest, with no nest to return to, only the cold wind beneath his wings. I see him.. standing on the edge of this vast, uncharted sea, his body weary from the journey, his heart hollow from years of drifting in search of something solid, something that could “tether” him to this world. There is a quiet beauty in the way he moves, though..like a lone sailor whose compass still points toward the unknown, always moving, always seeking, even as the storm never lets up. 

     But now, for the first time in his life, he has found land. A place to rest, a place to call “Home.” A small, fragile, piece of solid ground after so many years of wandering. The ocean, though still ever-present, has finally receded, leaving a small bay where the waves are not so loud, where the wind is not so harsh. And yet, this “Home” is not invincible. His grip on it is fragile, like a thread that could snap with a single wrong move. The alcohol, the storm that has ravaged him for so long, still calls to him, still whispers promises of escape. But if he drinks, he will lose it all. This fragile “Home,” this sanctuary, will slip from his hands, like sand falling through his fingers. And I watch him teeter on the edge of it, unable to stop the pull of the bottle that threatens to drown everything he has fought for. 

     I watch him slip, day by day, his body betraying him, his mind drowning in the liquid that promises freedom but only offers chains. The man I love is there, beneath the haze of it all, but I can barely touch him anymore. I feel his presence slip further away, like an echo fading into the distance, and it is a pain so deep that it reverberates through me. The weight of watching him destroy the only thing he’s ever had that’s real..his Home..crushes me.

     I am standing in the storm, watching him become the tempest he cannot escape, and it is killing me. The weight of it..the helplessness, the worry, the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to stop the spiral..is crushing. It is like being tethered to a ship that is slowly sinking, unable to reach the shore, unable to cut the rope. The ocean is pulling him under, and all I can do is hold on, my heart breaking with each wave that carries him further away. 

     But even in this, even as the storm rages and his edges become blurred by the haze of the bottle, there is something I will not let go of..something that, for all its fragility, refuses to be swallowed. It is the echo of him in the spaces between the chaos, the fragments of the man I know he once was, or still could be. It is the fleeting moments when his eyes are clear, when his words are soft and real, when he reaches out, if only for a second, to remind me that there is a part of of him, still alive. 

     This love is not about saving him. It is about accepting that, for all the pain it brings, this is the only way I can love him. In the moment as it is, not as I wish it to be. It is not the hero’s love, nor the redemption story we long for. It is the quiet, persistent love of holding space, of being witness to someone else’s struggle, even when you know there may be no victory in the end. Perhaps there never will be. But love, real love, is knowing that despite the unraveling, despite the falling apart, despite everything, you are there. And that, in its own broken way, is enough.

…….

At thirty-three

she drifts through gloom

a ghost of promise

a vacant room 

dreams rot like fruit 

left in the sun

life’s cruel joke has just begun

Each morning breaks a hollow shell

each night descends—a private hell

The mirror mocks with quiet sneers

a face still young

but crushed by years

At sixty-four

a ruined man

a painter who outran his plan

his hands once conjured worlds from air

now tremble with the weight they bear

The colors fled;

his visions bled

each stroke now paints the face he dreads

His canvases

pale tombs of thought

echo dreams the years forgot.

They meet in shadows

dim and bleak

two broken things 

too numb to speak

her need

a raw and hallow thirst;

his a longing just as cursed 

She clings to him

her final thread

a flicker in a world long dead

he holds her close

not for the fire

but for the ache

the shared mire

Their love is not the hopeful kind—

it’s poison fed to hungry minds 

a quiet pact to drown as one

to vanish when their time is done

they sit

two wrecks in twilight’s snare

dreaming of escape

but gone nowhere

each kiss;

a wound

each touch;

a scar 

bound together 

while breaking apart

No savior’s come

no stars alight

only deeper

the endless fight

a love born not of hope or grace

but of despair’s cold embrace

•••••••

The Same Thirst 

You are a forest burning in silence.

An ancient ruin I was foolish to love.

I thought I could be the rain,

but you worship the fire. 

You paint your world in strokes of decay,

brush heavy with regrets and a whiskey haze.

Colors bleed where they should not blend,

and I am the canvas you ruin again.

Once, I too was the flame,

a devourer of light,

a creature of shadows.

I drank from the abyss 

until it swallowed me whole. 

Now I stand on the edge,

scarred and without the drink,

my thirst bound in chains. 

But your Art is a siren,

it’s song slithering through my veins.

Your hands once steady, tremble with glass.

And the years drip through your palette,

thick as tar. 

You smear your pain in shades of despair,

and I am too young 

to wear the weight of your ruin. 

Your studio wreaks of turpentine and death,

each canvas a grave you dig for yourself. 

“It’s just a drink,” 

but I see rivers of poison, 

pooling in your lungs, 

and you’re drowning, calling it creation.

I try to pull you back—

but you are quicksand,

dragging me into your decay.

Your love is a riddle,

a curse,

a promise spoken in smoke and lies.

I should leave— but your ruin feels like home. 

Your ghosts are mine, 

and I know their names. 

Oh how I love you,

but you are killing me. 

And still, I stay. 

A martyr to the Art 

I once believed could save you.

•••••••

••••••• 

Here I stand 

A fool burning 

For you and you don’t 

Even realize that I

Am on fire.

•••••••

I am a museum full of Art

but you had your eyes shut