Saving you

I’m pulling red lace up boots over a spandex jumpsuit
Spangled with stars 
Blue like the ocean and red as the blood spurting from an arterial bleed

I’m taking the kids, your kids, and you
Trick or treating
Because it’s the right thing to do
Because it would be criminal not to

I pull your anxious heart together and dress it in a ninja suit

We take family pictures and only the kids smile

We go

With families, with friends

We go and pretend to belong

I’m hurting the whole time

I can’t tell if you are too but I reach out for solace and find none

It’s 8pm, the magical hour of too late

The time when all the emotionally unavailable people go home

And I realize it’s over with a start before it ends, before I end it

Thinking it’s all in the name of saving you, of saving them