Bury Your Flames - Poem by Lora Cooley

Blame it on our hands
Or blame it on our bodies
They said
'We like the way we feel when we get touched'
We held a match
But the flame gave up
I've knelt
Trying to find it
The blackened matchstick
I'm afraid of failure
The past is a flower
The future, the snow
I wasn't ever close to perfect
I let you go
Like a river
You will never go back to me
I will bury your problems in me
You will never admit that you blew the flames out
You tricked me
You came back
Wearing a necklace of hearts that you dragged through the mud
I wasn't sure what to say
Then I saw mine almost reached out to grab it said
'You're the only one I want to have it.'
I'm not sure that was true
After the hell you put it through
Your presence compressing my chest like a vine
Like my insides crawled out and went west
You move like fire through the forest
Your hands red as the skin on your lips
You flirt with distance
I taste it in your kiss
I bury the flames of your failure
The past is a lair
The future, a whore
You will haunt my head no more
Blame it on our hands
Blame it on our hands
I buried your flames in the dirt
I'm moving on
There are fires
Make dust from grass
There are fires
I should have known from the start that this wouldn't last