An Angel’s Ink (Pisanthrophobia): a Poem

After all the heartbreak – it’s just naïve to think my love is a sonnet, is a beating heart.

I saw his lips go blue and eyes roll to the ceiling. But first, I saw the soul leave another’s body. (Even after they said he was a corpse.)

I try to reassure myself with empty lullabies, but love is a Ouija board when you’re lost & lonely.

I have been feasting on chocolate and fiction, unable to compose much myself, but some composers were deaf and bereft of beating hearts.

My problem isn’t an ill-beating heart but one that beats too quickly, its syncopation out of time.

(An anachronism in contemporary media.)

I want to be found worthy of the graffiti you sketched on the bathroom mirror (of the wings you inked onto my shoulder blades), but I feel empty more often than not.

(Are angels allowed to be empty vessels or must they be cathedrals, their celestial bodies temples?)

These words don’t feel like poetry –

I think I’m just writing a diary.

(Like that sophomoric attempt at stanza breaks, at counting syllables like blinking satellites or shooting stars.)

Tell me you find me lovely nonetheless.

I read about addiction today, hoping to understand by educating myself through articles & research,

but I could hear you chiding me.

I think next time, I won’t fall in love with a memory.

None of this is easy anymore,

but even though I cannot trust my heart

(because of the past polluting every relationship like a drop of dye in the water)

I will not surrender.

I will not surrender.

I cannot surrender.