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I stared at a portrait of you yesterday. I noticed your flaws.
Is that odd to say? I stared deep into your painted eyes,
Like moths hiding before feasting upon the skeletons I have hidden in the closet.
I knew I should have put moth balls in their pockets, but then again,
It’s not like the skeletons are wearing coats.
How would the moths possibly eat away at them?
But then I noticed something strange:
Your hands laced over one another like ropes,
Ready to hang the signs of my insignificance above my head.
Similar to the stars that are above the roof above my head,
Your words were ready to prove my fantasies were false.
But then again, the stars were such an awfully long way away,
Matter of fact, my love, the moon, even though far off in the sky,
Was still much closer than your ropes ready to wrap around my neck.
By the time they reached me, I would have all but passed on my own,
How then could you hang above me my insignificance?
But then I noticed your arms, and that is when I crumbled.
I was once held in those arms, saved by them,
But now they coiled, similar to the hands, like ghosts of my past.
Your arms held secrets, whisking away with the wind,
Not only wrapped around your body, but wrapped around my heart.
But like I mentioned before, they were only ghosts,
And what ghost can hold a man’s heart?
Surely it’s nonsense to think that my heart could not simply slip out,
How then could you keep hold of it for long?
But I was becoming unsure, because then I saw your smile,
Like a cockroach, slipping in the crevasses of my body,
Creeping into the depths of my soul in tiny annoyances,
Sliding out of its hiding and back into my skin when I least wanted.
I had no way to counter this nightmare.
I had no way to crush your smile like the bug it was,
No way to lure it into a sticky trap.
And then the moths began to swarm me,
Eating away at my only protection of soft cotton,
Letting your ropes wrap around my skin.
I began to panic, you see.
Short of breath.
Dying.
But then I saw something new in you, something I’ve never seen.
Behind the moths, behind the ropes, behind the ghosts,
Even behind your slimy, creepy cockroach,
I saw a truth behind it all, and why things had to be.
I saw me, like the skeletons in my closet,
And similar to the stars and moon above my head,
Similar to my bare skin and bare secrets.
Those things are what truly wrapped around my neck.
And I felt so ashamed to see those moths as moths,
Because they were truly butterflies with colors hidden by the night,
And those hands were not ropes, nor those arms like ghosts.
I saw these vile things when really there was beauty.
Perhaps what I saw was actually my reflection.
My eyes were moths, ready to devour and expose,
With hands like ropes that I have hung above my head in false joy,
And even the ghosts that haunt me. My past mistakes.
I took a deep breath.
This was my entire fault.