He fell in love with her ghost.
Scars of their love
Ran up his back
And across his shoulders,
Memoirs of fingernails.

But he couldn't touch her.
Couldn't feel her kiss,
Only the frost
Like breath on a window pane
In the cold.

This house has a history of love.

Sighs caught between cracks in the floorboards.
Gasps melting softly in the wallpaper.
Her bare bones shaking like butterfly wings
On the edge of chaos.

On the battlefields,
Stripped naked
Of bone and thread.
Her eyes flicker ashes.
Quicksand is his grasp.
Caught in her throat,
Hung up by promises
For the future.
On the battlefields,
Naked for flesh.

She was found sprawled out
Across the newspaper clippings;
Scraps of dirtied dreams;
Ghosts of lust and revenge
That hid in the floorboards.

Her fate lingers in the cracks on his lips, the dirt underneath his fingernails, the hunger in his eyes.
There are even memories in death.

(Is it possible, at all, to just not go...? When I am so happy in the here and now.)

I'm not ready. [... you said forever.]

He said, (He said, he said,)
"Will this get any better?"
Oh Darling, don't.

(To sum up these emotions, this quintessence of heartbreak:)

I said, "look at the map on the wall, put your fingers on where we are,
no matter where I go we're just an inch apart."
You interrupted and said, "not that old speech again! -
If we're just an inch apart, then reach out and grab my hand."
(Strata - Hot/Cold (Darling, Don't)

I need your touch.
Oh Darling, don't. (Don't speak.)
He said, (He said, he said.)

The cage expands
as she inhales sharply.
Reverse the poison.
Let it swell.

She exhales
buttons, string,
broken beads,
shattered glass,
the bones of her broken
rib cage.

Flat against the floor,
Her skin is wallpaper flowers.
Gently aging time
And painted lips.

The dust settles
Softly, around the portrait.