sympathy for emma, 3.8

who will take seriously the series of words you string up; inspired by the most wistful of chords and quiet of walls, egged on by the gnawing inside this carefully constructed fence of ribs and deliberate standoffishness? little by little, construct and destroy until there's nothing but a pile of splinters and your hands soaked in blood unfamiliar but all that runs through the streets of your veins.

can you backspace, delete the ellipsis that always followed his name? can you move to fill the stagnant air hanging at the end of your love; pause so pregnant its water burst forth and flooded the empty cavern between your arms?

alas, the most beautiful and delicate must wither and perish; all that is certain is bound only by its uncertainty. and this, your greatest tragedy, pulses within the marrow of us all. it is on the lips of every poet and carries on the tune of the sweet strumming that led you to pick up this pen in the first place, tonight.