he looked at me and for a second i saw stars fall. i was no longer submerged in gravity's thick blanket, i was wrapped in his iris and pulled into the arms of his eye sockets.
i thought i must be an astronaut, since this was a different planet, something i'd always imagined venus or jupiter would be like.
i'm breathing through his lungs and it feels foreign to me, the kind of feeling you get when you step inside someone else's home--
except this one had a soul and a voice that put me to sleep even when i was so restless i felt i had the moon hanging on my shoulders.
so, with that, i crawled inside his bloodstream and shut out the lights, his voice barely audible when he told me he could no longer feel me pushing him away.

his lips tasted of nicotine
and his breath incapacitated
the network of neurons that strung
themselves together in my body.
i wanted nothing more than
for him to push me further into
adolescent infatuation.

there was something about
midnight that made my adrenaline raise
to half its usual condescending levels,
something that made me feel like
little earthworms were crawling underneath my wrists,
and they made me think of him when i tossed and turned at night,
when one star flickered i thought maybe he was
winking, maybe he was still
there,
somewhere.

you'll feel like he's staring into all the deep crevices on
your skin, all of the deepest intrusions that make you trust him,
but he's just looking at the purple bruise on your arm,
   something the cat dragged in, he'll say.
you'll laugh but that all-white teeth-showing is laced with
    something buried deeper than any self-dug grave.

most of the time when he's near, you'll feel like some kind
of fresh meat, trouble is, you don't realize he's this beautiful
  white tiger with black stripes and blue eyes,
    and while he looks at you, you don't wonder about how he'll
eat you up and spit you back out again.

heaven knows how much women like the broken boys,
and let me tell you, they're all the same,
  your therapist will tell you, putting out her cigarette and smoke dangling
     from her lips.

he had pastel cheeks and thin bones the
color of serotonin,

and

his hands had white callouses that bled
while he slept,
and sometimes when he awoke his lips
whispered of the hushed fluorescent
moon.

when he spoke his voice was as distilled
as a calm ocean tide,
and i wanted to be one of those swimmers to
drown myself in his tremendous
depths.