The Blood & The Bones

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it always hurts
today
and yesterday
all the days in this haze
and especially when they say
I must remember
as if I needed a reminder

but if I’m telling the truth
the red and the white and the blue
I am ashamed to say
sometimes it just looks like bloodstains
the kind you can’t wash out
and on this day it is everywhere
every screen
and cloth and paper

I’ll search for others
other reminders and other colors
in places you had been
where your kind would take me in
seeking them out in the eyes of a stranger
hoping maybe they might at least have
the same shade of hazel
as yours did
and the tan calloused hands
that could make me forget to remember
or remember to forget

I call him your name in my head
sometimes it falls off my tongue by mistake
funny how they never say anything
as if they are running away in me as well
and even funnier
how I do this to myself
how I bring them to this bed
hoping to fuck this pain away
or to push it deeper as they penetrate
until it is lost in me and I feel
not a goddamn thing

except inevitably
I will
because it cannot really ever
go away
just as I cannot escape
losing you again and again
on these remembering to remember days

the blood
& the bones