the romantic

i wish i didn’t see poetry in the freckled constellations scattered across your face

i wish the flooding of metaphors and similes would at least slow their pace 

i wish i didn’t see how the leaves dance when wind runs through them like a melody

i wish love and sorrow weren’t the muses i chose and need to keep me company 

i wish eyes were not windows to the soul 

but just skin and bone 

and organs i learned in science class 

i wish rainbows and rain 

and stormier days

were only the weather forecast

i want to face the cold hard facts but the world is a connect-the-dots on a kids menu and i am just a stupid, naive, little child in a world that’s too big for me to reach the top shelf

by myself

because i’m the type that grew up straining my eyes, draining batteries for my reading light 

the type that loves to dream but hates going to sleep at 7:30pm bedtimes 

but i’m tired now and it’s only 7 o’clock

“maybe it will stop,” she says,

"sometimes it just 

stops"

will i be better then? 

when i shed my permanent rose tint like a dead skin 

when i lose my ability to find beauty where there is none and never was 

when i wake up from my dream-state

when i attach weights to my shoes and come down from the clouds

back to the ground which is only dirt and rocks and nothing more

where life is not this or that but merely what it is 

and nothing more

the death of the romantic will not be beautiful 

it will be that and nothing more