poem: foolish games

i won’t tell you his name but

it’s very beautiful still inside my mouth

and i could have civilized him and

brought that innocence softness of him

into everyday candlelight.

the places where i go, now,

are only places where he smiled at me

once

but all is fiction and idealized in this locked

box inside of me

and my mind, which he

maybe would have softened.

i am mourning something

that never

was

i am licking at the burn scars

of a grand, fantastical

what if

and i am only nineteen years old.