Saint of lost causes

I almost let it slip

but your eyes locked the courage beneath my lips,

I could almost forget,

if regret wasn't built up like bricks,

solid as the shape

you pressed into my chest,

refusing to belong anywhere,

silence has built a home there.

There are versions of you I rehearse in darkness,

they linger in the pauses,

in the strange, decaying softness.

I’ve become the saint of lost causes,

still praying through the losses,

you leave just enough behind to keep me from walking away,

I’m the saint of lost causes,

loving what your silence promises,

choosing to hesitate just another thing that you hate

I’ve started measuring absence as intention,

your distance is deliberate in ways you don’t mention,

and not just the slow unraveling of facts,

never learning how to stay

intact.

Even now I track the afterglow you leave,

not from memory,

but with cold and meticulous instinct,

like my body kept a record my mind was never meant to

read.

There are versions of you

I rehearse in darkness,

they linger in the pauses,

in the strange, decaying softness.

If there’s anything left of you at all,

it’s in the way you’ll never change,

the better part of my demons show me nothing will remain.

I’ve become the saint of lost causes,

still praying through the losses,

you leave just enough behind to keep me from walking away,

I’m the saint of lost causes,

loving what your silence promises,

choosing to hesitate just another thing that you hate (you hate!)

And if there’s anything left of you at all,

it’s in the way you’ll never change,

there is no belief for me now

that anything will remain.