Muse

Elliot Melville 

Every song has become yours. Every melody, every lyric, every brushstroke of every painting, every street sign; the things that once were a distraction now lure me like a moth, and catch me like this toothy maw. And yours are pearly white, and I never minded that they wouldn’t let me go. Now I cannot love — I cannot brood — I cannot mind my own jaw, and my own lure, and my own melodies, when I know that you are loving and brooding and singing and breathing further away than I on later nights might walk. I can only dream — but not ever dreamily. The dreams, it seems, are very sure of you as my twisted muse: a broken flower which my mind sees to water but never to remove from the shade.