old eyes and something beautiful.

Your eyes were brighter than I said they were, they were glassy and wide but still quiet like the calm before the storm, the breeze before the hurricane. I could spend hours staring at them but I could only ever catch glimpses of them like dust in my palms, a moment before they would scatter and disperse. I had ghosts dancing in front of me once, coming in colors like they were made of pomegranate seeds and cherry blossoms and their limbs were awkward and young, fragile and made of milk. They had your eyes so I inhaled them like cigarette smoke and sewed them into my lungs, feeling their bones rub against my ribs as I turned gold in the sun and they explode at the ends of my fingers when I want them to. I hope your ghosts melt into your eyelids like our sweaty shoulder blades in mid-summer, like old fruit and when my hair still tasted like sea-salt. I’m starting to peel the tangles from my insides, realizing that sometimes we can’t help falling apart. And that we can hold our bones until they rattle loose but we can’t hold them once they crumble. There is something beautiful about the way we break, like cities that couldn’t hold up but they cause fires that blaze for miles, red with orange specks against blue skies and green eyes.