A Rose Garden (And Other Things I Never Promised You)
A silence rises up between us
As palpable as the taste of blood
And the scent of decay that clings to the air
Two living corpses
Admiring the pinpricks of light from a sky of false stars
And sharing the closeness
Of a stained-glass eggshell
Your arm
Wrapped around my naked shoulders
Has long since ceased to be a gesture of love
And become something sinister;
Predatory
How long ago was it, brother
That you transformed from the prince
Into the wolf?
"Aren't the stars beautiful tonight?"
We lie to one another
With increasing frequency
Hoping, but not really believing
That the lie might preserve what once was
Miracles we dismissed, eternal things
That were, after all, illusions we made ourselves
To cover the wounds the world inflicted on us
We could never admit:
The only thing that sustains us now
Is the agony we pretend to fight against
The virtue I protected
With a body steeped in sin
The revolution you promise
But never want to obtain
Between us is a wine glass
Half drunk
We do not have to speak it
Both of us know
The glass is half empty
We would die of thirst from a glass half full