To hold your heart in your hands To clean the rust from spindles, To wipe the dust once again As I excavate gears from sand I thought I heard your voice but it was only the wind Play god, The sun is setting over crops I might never find you, golden as it were The fields remember me Only sadness in the wake The architects rest their case as I watch the smoke billow from the road Every moment, every glimpse enveloped in the soot Everything I was, now never Ashes swell like undertow, Photographs that held their own Years of storms and floods Burn with what's left of us Aptly adorned in newly formed cracks, The walls find new ways to hide the draft It's nothing but melted wax Falls back into the dish Scratches and scuffs on the hardwood floor and burns on the table I know it's an eyesore Tiny freckles on the wood draped in white cloth to hide them from the world I bury my bones in the yard, like pictures that you carried in your pockets as a child All the nights I slept under the car just to be alone When I found a strand of hair in the hall I watched its colors fade, greying in my hand I heard a plane depart overhead but all I saw were trails of white and silhouettes Torn from the surface of skin, hastily Leaves the residue coated in debris Thrown to the curbsides of old trailer parks Just a memory but it looks fine to me That's when I dig down, Buried under dusty flannel sheets As heavy as the plaque that coats your teeth Down, Foundations that have long since cradled you You know Aptly adorned in newly formed cracks, The walls find new ways to hide the draft It's nothing but melted wax I am the wick Tearing the floor from your hard earned home I meant it as a token of love I want you to know the baseboards long for your touch Let my bones pollute the soil Leave my keepsakes in the dirt Wrap my heart in aluminum foil Bury me in my favorite shirt Heard a crow from miles away Lost its voice in the digital artifacts I left my penitence in the rain Now one with the weeds I guess this is letting go Burning photos, this was never home What you left in your wake forever lies in piles on the seats of burnt out cars remembered only by the cold street Holes you dig on construction sites and lots only contribute to the rust that coats the wheels My dying neighborhood It's never a gift, just a somber voice that haunts the faucet's drip as you get dressed and wonder where it all went My town is a living cold sweat Startled from blissful dreams My memory leads me back through barren dust and copses of evergreens You whisper like water glistening Ships in the distant sea My breath's not the only thing that fogs the windows as you leave My head is a factory It hums like a dead machine My memory leads me back through desert plains broken up by streams You whisper like water glistening Ships in the distant sea My breath's not the only thing that fogs the windows Left stunned by her gaze Flowers bend to her gait Left stunned by her gaze The shards of glass in my heart Why don't you stay? Why don't you cry? Why are you afraid to see the flames as they burst into the sky? If this is a loss, then loss is my place I am the flashing shadows on your face Why don't you stay? Why don't you cry? How can you hear the birds sing without ever asking why? I am a gas but I leave a stain I am the fingerprints burnt into your waist As if sorrow comes home, without slamming the door I left my notebook etched onto the walls for eternity This is a curse The shirts are sticking to my back again The smell of burning wood reminds me of home As water hits the dust, sounds like ever-melting snow And the morning sun reveals the lack thereof Forever in the after and holding my own arms I tear a wall down every night It's just a mirror on the other side Forever in the after We bask in dying light In spite of all my instincts, I follow the glow My reflection seems much clearer when watching rivers flow That was where I found myself cascading Like feral dogs that exited the womb as roadkill Just to be a stain on the garments of the engineers and revel in the specks of sun that graze the landfill Don't you come crawling back to etch your name on what we built from your scraps our home, get away That was where I found myself cascading Like feral dogs that limp across roads from home to home Ever-aimless, I was never owned My dying breath will serve as the final word I hold my breath and shed my skin Ascend, as the architects enter the frame I feel the breeze above my house and watch as the ambulance carries me away For every cent that you have made a bird drops a grain of sand into your machine We'll parade your head around the sides of your front lawn, We'll remember you for everything that you have done, With a shrine of trash and roses in the parking lot, You're a bastard and the greatest man I've ever known