Capital Gains

I cut away the long strands. Lighten my head. Searching the music for cues. Tracing the the memories for hints as to what's next. The spaces on the floor that weren't there until. The treasures we'd yet to bury. Now I can't remember where we left them.

Stripping away the skin. The fruit revealing the seeds of the person yet to break the surface. All we are is someone else's garden. Flowers to pick. Petals to be spent. Torn open like envelopes. Inside not what they expected.

In conversations with my future self I'd argue that she'd been to reticent. You can only be a child so long before you're devoured by your innocence. So grow up already. Admit. You chose those situations. Selected each individual to make it hurt all the better.

And I wanted to want. Things I could not have. Because there is nothing so seductive as what can't be had. No drug so potent as the forbidden.

Lacing up the boots of the hurricane. Pulling on the thick socks of the storm. I remember thinking I've been as close as I need to get. Alone like this is more than enough. That any closer would only prove us wrong.

We keep track of the castles. A desperate clock. We measure the folds in the sand. An anxious tide pushes us closer and further apart. There's a world under our feet and a world above us. A heaven and a hell simmering in each decision. A roulette in every lover. A bet. A hope. A trust. That our honesty won't betray us.

He talks in numbers. So that all I can do is add them up. He talks like the world was created just for us. So that all I can do is wait for him to stop.