Gold Caskets

The gold necklace I bought for her hasn't left it's box

Because life hits in perpenidiculars, and there are no straight roads

There are no clear paths or smooth cobble stone roads 

and there are almost always a few boulders in the way

 

But I move them.

I have nothing more than an insatiable work ethic

9 years I've loved words

8 times I've furiously quit during a long night, then gotten out of bed early and restless the next morning to start rewriting

6 times I've written down what I should have said to my loved ones when it was too late

3 times I've written poems for girlfriends and 

2 times I've been dumped

1 time there was no break-up

1 time I said, "I love you," instead

 

So maybe words aren't as powerful as I see them to be, or maybe mine just aren't powerful enough

Because if words were as I see them, no one would die

Sadness would be beautiful even when you're the one feeling it

And the sentences we speak would paint the walls around us

Fights would splatter angry, aggressive red and black marks on the walls

And morning-after "I love you's" would cover them in white

Beautiful works of spoken word would paint college-town coffee shops gold

And I see at least 2 gold sentences a day

I see the subtle beauty in people's words

They speak gold and paint the world around them

Sometimes gold can hurt like, "I fell in love with you the first time we met, then out of love with you the first time I met him,"

But other times it can pull diamond tears from charcoal eyes like an, "okay," when a boy asks a girl if she wants to go get coffee

Because her smile tells him she's been waiting for him to ask her for a long time and was starting to worry her hints weren't working

 

But they were

 

They were enough for him because she had gold hair even when she was too depressed to shower for days

And he could see the gold in her veins even though the blood on her bathroom floor looked red

The knife next to her was gold even though it caused him so much fear,

Fear that he would lose his golden girl

He was afraid that his best friend had lost too much gold to make it through the night

But she did, and they next day he asked her to coffee

Because even her shadow made the sun look like a bland yellow

 

But coffee wasn't enough

Having him wasn't enough

Because she felt she wasn't enough

But one golden bullet was

 

That's all I have:

An insatiable work ethic towards trying to find a few gold words to make up for one gold girl

Just enough to scream and cry until I paint my own walls and die in a bed of old gold journals

Enough to make a gold funeral

And die in a gold casket, 

Just like hers