Our only escape is in your garden of gleaming vermilion vines

The wall with the bountiful carmine-colored roses

You’re on every teenage girls’ wall, forever happy and young

You’re high every midnight from playing your red stringed friend in front of thousands of fans

The girls in their tight mini skirts,

 everybody wonders what it would be like to love you

You’re gone every night, lights flashing with your childhood mates

I hate it,

but I’m fine if it means I get to love the real you

Who never wants to hide

Who kisses my little nose

Who smiles downward, shyly.

Who sits in the morning sun and thrusts his chin to the sky

Who listens for its nature’s light voice in sweeping air

I’m happy while you delicately brush the strings to get the perfect chords

But part of me knows our love is calamitous,

I dream of the real you even when I’m awake

Even when your two inches from my body

Sinking in the old couch saying “I’m sorry”

“She means nothing.”

The radiance I thought your face possessed had fled

So I’ll let it play out through the love songs you write

Until I realize we’re out of time, until we’re no longer each other’s safe space

Until the roses in the garden wilt, the vines curl, and someone else listens to you strumming your guitar.