Ah, Hope, tell them where you are going.
Hitchhiking down haunted highways smoking in rest stop bathrooms just for the chance of having company.
Will you lie and say you’re ok with this
that you won’t tell a soul?
I know you made yourself, gather up your white sheets stained with what you sacrificed and drowned them in kerosene
denying their flag of truce, you sent them out of this world as a beacon.
I have seen your reflection
dead on the ground
in brothels and in the hallways of high schools
where people smile at suicide
I won’t let you be like that.
You deserve to rest in wildflowers and Christmas morning smiles and between the lips of a couples’ first kiss.

Hope, I can barely remember you, because you were long gone by the time I learned what family truly was, but I carry glimpses of you capriciously nipping at my heels as we

lolligagged in meadows overgrown with all of our yesterdays.

It seems as if you had brown hair, and a smile that made wallets feel worthless. And constellation freckles that were a simple type of beautiful.
With a white silky sundress that could illuminate exactly just whats wrong with growing old, tell me, Is it true that when you picked flowers, they bloomed brighter?

You see, I’ve found only death when I try to carry the beauty with me.

When you were young, did you ever stop and think of the tribunal for your soul that was already being undertaken, by the ones who claim to have your best intentions at heart? Or did you wander on, and make flower whisper wishes to the sky, staring back into clouds and rainfall kisses? When you saw your first marching curb stompers, did you imagine the trend would catch on?

Did you feel them unlock your ribcage, and treat your heart like an orphaned bird with clipped wings, did your stomach sink when they threw it down the well of gas and sulphur claiming to be the American dream? I wonder how heavy your diary must be, with the tears of the sea stained into the pages, you shouldn’t have to lift oceans when you want to feel honest. Do the voices of past mistakes ever give you a headache? Or will the cheap swill you found in the back cabinets behind a pair of dusty, never before used baby shoes help drown them out enough, so you can keep on living in the peripherals of shadows? 

In the end
while you stand at crossroads making deals with ground dwellers and dusty corners,
I know I must leave you here
for there is an evaporated ocean out there where I will put my roots, salty with the sweat and tears of backroads and overpasses, and I won’t bear the sight of you breathing in toxic disloyalty when I tried so hard to save you from the
wolves
who feast upon fallen stars,

you fell so far.