you stare at me with those dull, hungry eyes
your life is envy, your hope is far and fleeting
where is your joy, dear sister?
what happened to your brilliance, your sunbeam glow?
hollowed out by addiction & obsession,
you gaze sadly at the pained/paned glass

and i have flashbacks of the cold october rain
pounding against my back, we ran (we flew) down the street
off the crackling porch, past the decaying houses,
deserted, abandoned, our childhoods –
away to scale the dead-grass levies, the laborious climb
up to the peak of our concrete mountains
climaxing at pale gray skies (we could almost touch the sky)
beneath a sea of unlucky clovers & slated train tracks
(we didn't know what we were doing
we didn't know how free we were –)

but you sold off your integrity
for a moment of glitter & fever
(it looked just like the real thing, you swear)
adulterous, forbidden, forgone
and i don't know your smile anymore
deceivingly perfect, innocence shed
tainted by lust and big-city smog pollution
(the things you were never meant to see)
your white dove wings are sullied, broken
rooted to intangible captors, fickle & impure
what i wouldn't give to see you fly again
soaring just below the sun (fair icarus)
but when your descent turns waxy & molten,
don't say i didn't warn you.

i wish you knew how free you were
when you had nothing to hold you back.