a broken clock with pearl inlay

hasn't sat on my wrist

since the date with your first

or told me the time

(I stopped giving it a twist)

since you said it made you mine

(As you were stolen away)

on your last breath

and left me (with only dismay)

belonging to your death

priceless things written in ink

all given to me made my heart sink

with every word coughed out

the children tried not to pout

as I won out the lottery of cruel reminders

money never gave me the hint of your smile

Nor lace the caress of your skin for awhile

The green chalk lays abandon

where we once danced in tandem

oh, how we were young,

stumbling hand in hand,

what rousing melodies were sung

provoking the cat to yowl

and the hounds to their daily howl

but those days faded away

to bald heads on marzipan bone frames

The adults always asked me to go away

telling me how I'd break you with our games

So I got a black board with my allowance

and three sticks of chalk precariously balanced

on my arms smudged with yellow and green

then suddenly adults were never mean

as I quietly entered your prison

for with you I was entirely smitten

seven pages are strewn about

full of colors that seem to shout

the incomplete story of your life with me

oh how easy it seemed to be

with words I can no longer read

pictures never half hearted for the deed

perfection but messy by far

these are the cruelest works of art

how many times have I tried to throw them out?

This I cannot count

you had asked me once

what I'd do without you

and like a great big ponce

I'd promised life wouldn't bounce

which meant to say it wasn't fun

without you to hold on to, honnybun

the curlers you'd tangled in my hair

still dangle in the air

when I open the bathroom door

I get tempted to drop to the floor

as I remember your gentle hands

hurting my tender scalp with bands

I was always the one with long hair,

but I always had thought you were fair

full of fire and light to my flighty wind

but the heated bars just barely bend

on your hospital bed,

so I can barely mend

the wounds the radiation had inflicted

and to the morphine you got addicted

as if your very core shifted

the less like the fire you were

and more like winter you became

sometimes it snowed, but often it hailed

you were so sick when you wailed

"I can't wait until we can bail"

The end of those days would not come,

and in those bleached halls you became undone

There was not a key created

to keep you from what was fated

These things are placed where they can be seen

For how much they had come to mean to me

because sometimes I question

the very suggestion

that your perfection

was ever shown to me

without any thought of a fee

even as your soul did flee