Burn all of your bridges
just so that you can build them again
with thicker ropes.
Hurt all the people you love
and then commit every felony to win them back.
Drown yourself in bleach until not even Heaven’s light
can compare to how bright you can burn.
Turn yourself inside out
and paint your organs the color of what you see
in your dreams.
This is the art of
living with a ticking heart — a grenade you
throw through windows to make a
point that language
has no room for.
This is how I destroyed you. And this, is how
I kept you alive.
Dig yourself a ditch, six
feet deep, and bury everything that you’ve ever
said, everything that you’ve never
meant, and everything that has
burned you and left you with nothing
but ash.

” ‘And would you have you proud folk say to you: “There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North?” ’ ‘I would,’ said Faramir. And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky.”