i am inside her skin. i am her fingertips, her kneecaps, the back of her throat -- and i feel everything. like liquid i pool and congeal where the surface gives way. her skull is a quarry after a rainstorm, thick, indiscernible.
i want to hear every word she has ever spoken like it's being said to me. the tension breaks. i feel her breath on my ear all the way across the country. i can't imagine her doing something like that. you know, being human. she is enslaved to the cycle, reeled back in like a world record muskie.
this will not be the last time. again, i will feel it. her tongue meets the roof of her mouth.
again and again and again.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
i remember the first time i cried into another person's skin. it felt a lot like shame, probably. there's something so embarrassing about vulnerability; she had left and returned, left and returned, etc.
i can be as gentle as she'd like. i can be mean and nasty. i consider everything for a brief moment. this is it, right? this is all there is. i wake up on the floor again, in the bathroom. she sweats her concealer off.
i feel her fingers digging into my ribcage, bones creaking like an old staircase. somewhere along the way, i have learned to come to terms with everything unfathomable -- "make sure you're quiet when you leave."
5 am peaks through the blinds; every house is unfamiliar to me now.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
i want your indistinguishable dreams and memories. your tongue speaks nothing but words i have already written down. i'm always talking about coming home and half-open blinds, speeding down the interstate.
i feel like i am a child again; the hum of your engine lulls me to sleep. it's good in the light, it's good.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
my limbs go numb and my fingertips swell like moisture in a doorframe.
it was a scorcher out yesterday; the sun burnt holes in our skin, turned us into paper-mache. we bonded over the fact we missed that feeling -- missed the glow behind our eyelids, the light sneaking through the blinds at sunrise.
i open my arms and accept it, swaying, falling. i am a collector. i house these memories in my soul, every summer since i was seven. again and again, my eye catches a shiny thing in the sunlight and i slip it into my pocket.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
i talk to my mother periodically in my head; "that girl i used to love, i haven't written about her in months."
as it all passes, i find more and more words for the things my mother never taught me -- the trees, god, the window in the bathroom that faces the street.
we creep around each other the way we both creep around mirrors.
i think my fatal flaw is leaving things unfinished. i leave the parts of me that are mean and nasty on the forefront, a disease that only she can cure.
half of the sandwich rots in the fridge. the feeling suffocates me; hunger and wanting and everything else disastrous.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
there is something disgusting stuck in my throat. the dogs are barking. i gnaw on the joints of my hands to the beat of their dissonance. i secede, urging, marveling in the irony of it all.
i go over it in my head like i will say it, but i don't. i love you. let me in. she says she misses me, but only after the sun sets. let me in. i fester at her doorstep, under the table, everywhere i am not allowed anymore --
i bite, growl, split my maw on my chains. she does not look away.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
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