Painted Melancholia

there's a cocoon of heartbreak nestled in my chest,

each vibrant pang of longing casting shadows

against the realm of what I know myself to be.

when you said the words that slayed me,

I thought I'd never be the same again

because the shell of what I was

defined itself so cuttingly by your words.

once, looking at you made my heart spring

alive with the colors of autumn leaves,

and you were just as fleeting with your whims

that woke me and broke me and cast me aside.

I shattered myself into neon fragments

just to shine some light on all your gray.

I wanted to be your everything, the pieces

to wrap around you in a warm embrace,

but what I didn't realize then was how

a single lightbulb couldn't save a city.

you were a fortress moored across a bridge

that you burned so that I couldn't cross—

making you the one thing I couldn't have.

what brought me back from the brink

was not the apology you let hang,

dangling like a string to a desperate cat,

but the fact that I walked away, leaving

you alone on the edge of that cliff.

and the battered glow within me

still managed to pave a golden path

that lit my way back home to the love

I had always had within myself,

for myself, forgotten along the way.