After you, my life was a cold spring rain,
Bound to a mind full of teeming recollection.
Even as I sit here, tied down by what once was,
A brighter dawn waits outside these doors.

But whose to say that I can break them down?
Confidence has never come unto me; after all,
It was with tears in these seaside eyes, long ago,
That you told me I could do anything I dreamt of.

After you, I was oil-less paint on a canvas--
A canvas on which I could not stick to without oil—
Borne of a paint that had been drained of it.
You were my oil—so many kinds of it;
Now, I find you to have been nothing but a kerosene,
As I’m burning up in the fire of my own mistakes.

But whose to say that these ashes are smoldering?
The phoenix rises from its ashen grave; as such,
I find myself an eagle, flying high over the wayward sky
Knowing that I’d picked you off as prey in my first days.

After you, I was kept from loving like I had with you-
No man could suit me well enough, because they’d not your eyes.
It was never hard to make me melt, with my butter skin.
No matter each of my trials and tries, I could not heat your chocolate eyes.

But whose to say that melting was to show love?
Our days are now so far gone, and since them I have chilled.
The only heat I know is my memory of you—what you left
And with each passing glance to a destiny we could have shared.

Before you, I stood on my own two feet—
They might have been on the legs of a baby bird,
Dumb and weak, but they could sport me well enough.
I was always standing, and still I could stride.

And who’s to know the inner workings of this world?
Perhaps it is the flow of love beneath our skin in which we act;
Like blood, if we have not enough, our body sacrifices to make more.
An indulgent feeling by which we feed, by which we yearn.

Before you, I was a life of light gray on a field of white.
You could tell my impurities from where you stood,
And perhaps my smile was not the brightest!
But, before you went away, I was still able to shine.

And who’s to know if love dies at its grave?
Even now, I stand on a hallowed ground, a precipice
On which the intersections of two hearts have crossed before
One so fragile, and one rogue—I can still feel it. It’s you.

Before you, there was a girth to my heart;
I was so easy to trust because I knew what not what it was to trust.
Drained now of my secrets—you left with them, I’ve one choice;
To divulge myself upon humanity, or be lost in translation.

And who’s to know if I haven’t been a lost soul?
Without you, I am a shade of white on a field of it.
Before, I was noticed, I was he who stood from the crowd.
Now I am nothingness; I am he who stands.
I might not stand like I stood in your presence,
But without you, I scrambled to my feet and fled—for my life,
For my heart.

Without you, I have no one to love in all of honesty.
If a man takes me, then I do not see him, we are never entwined.
He might think himself loving a boy, loving a revolutionist,
But he will never know that he is only loving something that you sculpted with your own two hands- that you crafted through what was once tender passion.

And who’s left to care?