She had these smoky green eyes
That never looked clear
As if she were hiding something.
Her full red lips parted
As she turned to look at him
With her clouded eyes
That told him she was someplace else.
He loved the way the lights
Made her face and hair shine.
She was everything he had been looking for.
She loved to talk about philosophy.
They stayed up late every night
Making up new theories about everything and anything.
She took pictures of him in black and white
When he painted her in her garden.
She took baths with rose petals floating atop the water
Teasing him, yet hiding everything.
There was poetry in everything she did.
It was there in the way her hands moved.
Or how she would dance before him
With strange, exotic music
Filling his mind and ears.
He would close his eyes
And let the singers' electric voices take him away.
She hung glittering stars from the ceiling
And attached white Christmas lights to the walls.
The stars shone in her eyes.
They made love at the slightest touches of skin.
Just her fingers through his hair
Could drive him wild.
She laughed at all of his corny jokes.
She had a beautiful laugh,
Like bubbles rising to the surface.
He couldn't get enough of her.
He kept her picture close to him
And a small piece of cloth in his pocket
That she had kissed with her red lipstick
And had sprayed with her perfume.
He felt dazed and dreamy in her presence.
The mere thought of her made his body ache.
He needed to feel her in his arms,
Needed to be close to her.
He started noticing little things about her.
She started eating less at dinner
And her rosy cheeks began to drain in color.
She developed dark circles under her eyes.
Those curves of her body that he loved so much
Began to thin out and he touched bone in their place.
She became more secretive.
He heard messages on their phone
From doctors, about test results coming in.
She came home one day with not just rainwater
Dripping down her now pale face.
I'm sick, she said, chocking back the tide.
He flew into a state of shock.
That night they both cried, curled up close
As she muttered, I thought this would be forever.
He watched her shrink away in her hospital bed
As if it were eating her body.
Her wrists, arms, and hands became so fragile
That he worried he might break her
Each time he simply held her hand.
Her bluish eyelids shut out her world to him
As she slept, and he worried that she might not wake up.
He burst into tears when he found tubes coming
Out of her body.
She could not live without them there.
Her face became sunken in
And he watched her deteriorate.
Then they put her on life support
And he thought it wrong,
That a spirit like hers
Should have to be stuck here in this place.
She gripped his hand on day
With all of the strength she had left
And told him that she didn't want to live this way.
Turn it off love, I can't stand it anymore.
He wouldn't let the doctor do it.
He had to himself.
He pulled the plugs from the outlets
And watched her green heart rate
Jump across a screen,
Getting smaller and smaller.
She had her hand in his
As he kissed her smiling face,
Telling her that he loved her
As she faded away.
He put roses all around her grave,
Piled inside her coffin.
The same color she had sprinkled in her bath water.
He came back to her grave everyday.
He planted a weeping willow tree
Beside her grave.
He imagined the roots tangling and growing in her hair,
Drawing nutrients from her body.
She would like that,
Call it poetic
And then paint it in a picture.
He started coming less and less.
He gazed at her picture
Until his eyes became as sunken in as hers.
The manager of their apartment
Found him still in his bed,
Rose's picture clutched to his chest.
The paramedics called it a drug overdose.
Everyone else called it a broken heart.
Now it would be just as Rose had said
That night when she told him she was sick.
It would now be forever.
 
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