ten of swords

we are not what we've lost and we're not what we have let go but we're something that we have left to die in the pools of blood, with broken heads and arrowed backs and hearts that stopped beating the exact moment they fell in love with a bullet and died the second after, when their love destroyed them.
we are the fallen kings on the ten of swords, our own blades stuck in our insides, royal coats and golden crowns smashed into dust.
we are the ghosts of the houses that were lost to ages, marked as historical inconveniences, erased from the history books, rewritten memories and faces all scratched from the family albums.
what are they except unfulfilled promises, empty words, hollow iloveyous said out of loneliness and misery, what are they except long forgotten feelings and thoughts as heavy as sunken ships and aching chests and aching hearts and aching bodies stacked in the darkest parts of our minds, drowned in the ravendark seas and lakes and rivers;
and what do they feel except acid words on their ghost tongues, burned hearts in their crushed ribcages, dried stains of blood on the rotten flesh of their phantom limbs that look like limbs no more, still outstretched to the sky.

and if we are these ghosts, then what are we?
and if we are these ghosts, then what do we feel?
and if we are not the forgotten, but those who forgot, do we even deserve to be buried in our own graves, to live and laugh and love--

and if we are none of these things, then we're nothing more than rotten leaves, vanishing under pouring rain.