most nights, your name is penned across the sky
inked in cursive pens divine
traced with gold and underlined with light
and bleeding into the starry paper behind

in the beginning, it was so easy to love
but what good is loving if receiving is tough?
acknowledgement vindicates my inner guilt
for following the way that I was built

everything I've ever decided to quit
has claw marks embedded deep in it
and downy feathers adorning the fissures within
where the love of a steadfast partner should have been

inside the locket you left, resting on my shirt
there are two faded and crumbling pictures
one of you and me when we were young and carefree
and one of a stranger, alone, holding eternity