Is there a way,

To only save the good?

The withered flower, molding in its vase,

Fills me with loneliness and desperation.

I don’t want to throw it away.

I wish I could’ve preserved it in amber, left it untouched.

Is there a way,

To take every good memory and hang them up in frames?

I wish to walk through them in the gallery of my mind.

I just want to remember the good.

I remember the ways in which you made me smile, and then the twinges of pain creep into my heart.

I feel overwhelmed by what happened to us, in the thousand ways we broke.

In trying to blend our completely different lives,

We created a version of each other that we both fell in love with.

That’s where the harm was done.

I found a way,

To make you work for me, to understand who you are,

To my own detriment.

I think about the joy you brought,

About your playful beauty, about our shared love.

I think about the days when our roses were in bloom.

I wish I could pluck them, encase them in my memory just as so.

But when I try, I bleed.

Roses have thorns too.