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.
See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security. — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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