Fools

UNREQUITED

I skinned my knees trying to catch the ends of your shirt

for the very last time,

branded the cracked pavement with a flap of my skin

and called it love instead of breaking,

bruised my lungs calling after you even as you sprinted

away from me and into hiding like

an impala from a tiger's hungry mouth

and oh, how starved this heart of mine was indeed,

fed with nothing but months and months of folding

myself into an apology

you felt you were too golden to take with those hands

that I once tended to when they were bleeding.