There were times when flesh seemed to pull off like petals. And it all was a randomized riddle. Does she love me or not? Seven severed limbs later i must say "Not." But I've laid it all out in an atlas. There are rivers to cross between happiness and loss and unfortunately one of those rivers is the Styx. Just look at that quadrant, it's impossible to miss. You fall to the map and make that journey, yearning to never let go of her hand. You reach the bank and the sand sticks to your feet like a drunken fog hiding hate. You dive in the river and she splashes behind, but something seems strange when the water dries up and you hit a small puddle in its bed, nearly drown but then steadily pull yourself up from the face-shaped stones. So when you step back out and your hair is wetted down, and the black liquid drips from your blue, panting lips, you will notice that something unbroken was fixed. The heart-shaped pendant has been coated in piss. And you'll wander alone where you once scaled a cliff with a partner whose cables kept you from careening amiss. And now you must jab only fingernails in to surmount the same obstacle again and again. And your flesh is a wetsuit that holds it all in. All the tears that just beckon to hiss when they hit the sand. The ocean inside makes you feel like you're swollen, but the mirror reveals that your skin has folded in. And you'll savor that last kiss like the last time you slept with the windows wide open, and inward she crept to surprise you with a pounce as she bounced on your bed. When you woke up to rosepetals falling instead. And you'll find that her lips were tatooed on that night to the roof of your mouth when you open it wide. The mirror zooms in on the reminder inside that she once placed her tongue where your love now hides. Never to pour from your mouth to her ears when the telephone tickles your heart with her clear and unchanged voice. One choice changed that coo from delightful to simply unbearable. So you fidget with forms in your mind to remind you that some things were bad, yeah, some parts were sad. Like the time that you waited for hours to see her and found out she'd left town abruptly. Or like that time you walked all the way to her room and her window was open but you just knew you could never jump in like she did. She would never want you unininvited. No, never at all. So you hopped on a bike and glided home as the tears dried to salt and the cold wind assaulted your face with a wintry blast of reality. " Never seek eternity in the eyes of a recluse." Just take the bridge next time you arrive at the oily black river that splits off your mind from ever seeing totality to conjure reality. Speed through that synapse and make the connection. Every perfection has holes in its eyelids so even when they're closed they can see all of you and you're just another mark left by dirty hands on a journal. You were never more than a label on an unopened bottle.