speaking softly on rocks

that cut our thighs through our jeans

the contrast not going unnoticed

but this is how it is for us, always

a painful contradiction of love and hate

in the same breath

a swelling heart, deflating in a second

but we would not be lovers

if love was a straight line

(anyway)

I tattoo your name on my arm

as if I am scared that time may
erase it from my memory

as if flesh speaks louder
than a heart that beats

to the rhythm of fractured souls

your name -
I will bury in my skin forever

long after you have forgotten
how to form the sound of mine

I have been waiting for my demons to
mould themselves around your heart

to sink their teeth into your soul

so that you may bliss me with the kind of absolution I have been craving

since before I was old enough to drink

but I have learnt that shedding my scarred skin
so that it may become your

skin

is not only selfish of me
but will also strip me to the bare bones

shaking spine and clavicle

so that there will ultimately be nothing left of me
to see

your eyes speak of dreams
that were abandoned

and as my fingers wrap around yours

I want to inject old passions into your blood

so that the fire you lost along the way
is rekindled

I want to be the flame that sets alight
those long forgotten hopes

I saw in you
all the phases of
the moon

felt each constellation
mapped by your
fingertips on
my spine

you were cosmic
and our love
was a meteor shower
above a sleeping Earth

a quiet threat
that only the stars
had the wisdom to see

lost souls,
they called us

but we weren’t

we were just navigating the
impossible

walking with splintered spines
on quicksand

but our hearts had found themselves
thrown together in the chaos

we used each other’s eyes
for mirrors

as reflections of our
souls

you taste of ink and blood

and words that have been chased
with too much whiskey

but I will drink from your lips
until both our hearts

shudder like stars

till we are left, merely bones
shaking in a shroud of skin