to be tangled in you is freedom. freedom from the constraints of being a person, from the loneliness of autonomy, from defining everything and myself to exhaustion. to lose myself completely, to not know where you end and i begin, to not know where i am and what is the jugular of peace. i’m not ensnared if it’s you. my mind is blank, my body reacts, and it’s so simple, it drives me to tears. you kiss your hand thinking it’s mine, you are so certain. and i think you enjoy being in the trap as much as you enjoyed setting it.

there’s irony there, in the heart. in every beat, there’s a bit of mirth. protected by the chest, obfuscated by layers of blood, bone, and tissue — the heart is a recluse creature, mistaken to be wild and free buried under the soil of the body. yet she is demanded to be of glass — clear with a fragility that doesn’t suit her. “beat for me,” they demand, and she stills. “show yourself to me,” they ask, and she sinks further down. “i won’t hurt you,” they promise, and if she had eyes, they’d be rolled. leave her be, and if you should make the journey to reach her, she might skip a little at having been discovered in good-natured company.

i return to the world from my hours long sleep, leaving my bed still tangled in the tail end of my last dream. without even a chance to unstick my lungs from my back or wipe my bleary eyes, i shuffle towards the cabinet where i keep the coffee. i always have instant coffee – it’s not fresh, but the brevity is gratifying when you’re tired. it’s still habit for me to reach for this, but i put it back because there’s something better to come if i am a little patient.

you recoiling at the thought of instant coffee was funny at first, but i began to think why i continued to drink it. i wasn’t scared of the effort, but i couldn’t be bothered so i settled for what would be easy. but that changed the first morning i saw you in my kitchen brewing it for me. i couldn’t have been more in love.

the roasted scent no longer bitter and stale but fragrant, the espresso cascading over a cup of milk, delicately diffusing with the dairy in a loving long-term marriage they have always had. paired with your morning hair and sheepish grin, i doubted whether i really needed the caffeine.

i had never known coffee to taste this ambrosial, this good. when the warmth passed my lips it lit candles in the coves of every nerve in my body. you asked me if it was good and it was perfect. you said you’d make it for me like this all the time if i wanted and i wanted your coffee only if it came with your company. it was a good deal, you said.

soon i came to expect the coffee to be made and brought to me. i was spoiled by your kindness, which spoiled itself. you left the coffee machine and some grounds and other things to make it. it was never like yours, but i assume the taste would be off now if it was.

i turn on the machine, slowly awakening as my senses suddenly remember to do their jobs. the cream and sugar melt into the cup. it’s warm enough. it’s not like it was before, it never will be.

i throw away the instant coffee container, the last remnant of how things were before you. i can live in a post-you world comforted at least that something lives with me where you left empty space to die.

you’re here and gone in a flash, like the coffee i used to drink. a slow drip will see me through it all.

the paths leading to everywhere gleam onyx as the night in your daytime eyes.
the sky like your warm-milk skin, nighttime flecked with the brown sugar stars of your freckles.
flowers bloom in the delicate pink of your lips; every garden is an homage to your kiss,
every petal like your strawberry-preserve tongue on a stem.
i would never want for a life of technicolor bore,
if the world was painted in this palette of yours.

to love and be loved is to relinquish control of everything.
to love and be loved is to unlearn the games you are taught to play and facades you are supposed to keep.
to love and be loved is to be raw and open and animal and ugly and beautiful — all at once.
to love and be loved is to live in the valleys in one another so next time, it may rise to meet you.
to love and be loved is to be the emergency and the relief, the storm and its eye, the night that hides and the morning that will never let you.
to love and be loved is to kiss and fall silent over and over again until you tire of lips and move elsewhere.
to love and be loved is to be extraordinarily human and divinely felt.

the salt in my skin grants me a bit of safety
from those who lap at the souls of the weak. the one or two who dared to taste me recoiled their tongues, mouths more sour for having wasted saliva on me.

i understand how to live as a sharp misfortune of the senses.

but i don’t understand you, with your heart an expanse of sweet sand, ready to give a spoonful for a bitter tea, or a hearty cup for a neighbor with sudden need.

don’t you see the crows circling, waiting to gorge on your ripe heart? they take pieces like hard candy from a bowl, hoping to find their whole from a beauty best not enjoyed in parts.

i don’t understand you, how you share so sweet a thing with drifters on a sugar fix, a knowing smile dancing on your face. crows dressed in a finch’s feathers chirp their pathetic thank you song and it is enough for you.

but if we tasted each other, your mouth would pucker and i’d be no better than the crow with your love in its beak.

people change, that’s one of the things i love most about people — that we will never be the same twice, for better or for worse. but i want to be selfish for once and keep you just as you are right now. as someone who loves me.