Bury Your Flame - La Dispute

We could blame it on our hands,

They lifted the drink to our mouths so we drank it. Or

we could blame it on our bodies,

they say, “We like the way we feel

when we get touched.”

You’ve got your fingers snared in my veins,

I think it’s time you pulled them out.

And I don’t care about the flesh it’ll tear,

it isn’t flesh that I’m worried about.

We held a match to keep our sight on the path but the flame gave up and we lost it.

And I’ve knelt for the last three years trying to find it back with the blackened matchstick.

Today I’m not afraid of failure.

“The past is a flower.

The future: the snow.”

I wasn’t ever close to perfect, but

I didn’t let you go.

You let your doubt like a river lead you

on and on and on and

you will never get back to save what you had, hear me promise, “I will

bury your problems in me so sleep soundly.”

I held your heart in my fingers now it’s

gone, it’s gone, it’s gone and

you will never admit that you bid the wind blow the flames out

And buried the coals in the sea.

You tricked me.

You came back and you brought floods

wearing a necklace made of hearts that you’d dragged through the mud.

I guess I wasn’t quite sure what to do.

But then I saw mine, almost reached out to grab it. Said,

“Darling, you’re the only one on Earth I want to have it.”

But now I’m not so sure that that was true,

after the hell you put it through.

But there was no sharp pain this time,

just the ghost of your presence compressing my chest like a vine.

An unshakeable absence,

like most of my insides crawled out through my mouth and went west. But that’s fine.

We cast our hearts in plaster.

We imagined our bodies were fashioned from stone but

they chipped at the brick and the mortar,

We found out that we’re only layers of skin hiding bone.

And our bones are like chains, old and rusted in the rain—they’re going to snap when the weight shifts.

You moved like a fire through the forest.

You’re hands were as red as the skin on your lips.

You’d been flirting with distance, princess,

I tasted its spit in your kiss.

Oh, mistress, know:

Today I will bury the flames of your failure.

The past is a liar, the future: a whore.

I’ll lay your bones into the earth and you

will haunt my head no more.

We could blame it on our hands, but

it was our mouths that opened up to swallow and

our heads that commanded us drink.

But as I buried your flames in the dirt,

I watched the smoke pull your ghost from the grave. And

I fear they’ll only lay in wait till we are face to face again.

Just when I said, “I’m moving—I’m moving on.”

I felt them come to life again.

There are fires that tear through valleys and make dust from grass.

There are wires—bound in blue light they pull us to the past.

We are tired. We should’ve known from the start that this thing wouldn’t last.