You left in me the vacancy of almosts,
a house I created in my heart that was never lived in;
now the wallpaper peels and the floorboards creak
with the weight your feet never placed on them
and I sit alone on the roof, too scared to go in,
staring up at the night sky, looking at the moon,
thinking about the constellations we formed when we touched--
how you dipped my neck back, pressed your lips to me,
grazed at my veins with your teeth,
left bruises but never quite let me bleed.

A week ago I was in your arms, trying to let my guard down.
I sit alone now-- too scared to go in, too scared to try again.

You kiss me on a Saturday night in my car.
You tell me you were never in love with her
and I breathe forgiveness from my lips like the greatest relief in the world.

You hold me on a Sunday night in my room
and you trace the outline of my ribs with a palm
that's switched from harnessing claws to soft fingers back to claws
so many times that I've lost count now.
I push back your hair and map your face out with my fingertips,
trying to memorize the warm skin stretched out over your bones
and trying to comprehend how I could begin to place my hand
on your tired soul-- bring light out of the depths of you and make it rise to the surface with my touch.
When you ask if we can stay like this, wrapped up in each other, forever, my mind races,
and I pray to a God that I don't believe in-- plea that He will let me stay in this moment,
before you run back to her,
before your words crawl back into your throat to collect dust,
before you grow spikes like spores under your warm skin,
and before I open up my arms and let you push them into my vulnerable body with a steel face and tears running down my cheeks.

We see a movie on a Monday afternoon.
The darkness of the movie theater heightens our senses,
and I trace idle circles on your skin,
feel your lips on my cheek and on my chin.
As you're about to go home, we can't seem to stop hugging,
and I'm kissing you, kissing you, aching for the breath to leave me
because something in me knows that tomorrow won't be the same.
You kiss my knuckles as a soft goodbye and walk away from my house.

I come to school on Tuesday morning
and she's hanging off your coat in the hallways.
You look at me with pain in your eyes.
You offer no other explanation.

I take what I can get.
I don't ask questions I don't want to know the answers to.
I lay with you and map the plains of your face with my fingertips and I think:
this face, this face--- this face that's caused me so much pain,
this face I've seen buried in the neck of another girl,
holding her tight and apologizing for me.
How odd that I can place my palm on something that was such a symbol of pain for me once.
I hold your hands soft in my hands and I think:
these hands left an imprint in my skin, a warm reminder and then a cold sting-
but now they are touching me soft, and your lips are kissing me soft,
and I take what I can get.
I don't ask questions I don't want to know the answers to.

I've been thinking about your body on my body;
fingertips that paint a portrait on my skin,
lips that pull a poem out of my throat.
I've been thinking about our hands intertwined
on the softness of your bed sheets,
my hair a sea spread out against the dark wine
and our bodies moving together in unison.

I've been thinking about your body on my body.
I've been thinking about what it does.

I would love you like an ocean. I would shift into a tidal wave for the shore of your hands. You would shape yourself into me like the sand does for the sea.

I would love you like a warm fire on a cold Sunday afternoon. I would warm your cold fingertips after a weary week. You would feel the wisps of my hair on your warm skin like the wisps of a comforting flame, and we would be at home.

I would open up your veins and set up shop inside each and every chamber of your heart. I would run my fingers along the lining of your soul and show you that you cannot stain my skin black, that I will not let you, that you are as much of a map as I am and that I will walk brave into the unknown and place my palm on the essence of you.

I would make myself a river basin for you. You could pour yourself into me and I would not send you back to the clouds. Let me be your anchor, let me pull you down into the embrace of my arms, let me calm you down and kiss you into a fervor and make you a home in the fresh white skin of my scars.

I would love you with so much force and equally as much softness. Just let me.

Little girl,
you are not the scars on your thighs
or the mocking stares from "friends."
You do not live to be there for others;
you are your own galaxy, beautiful-
unknowable even to yourself sometimes
and that is not entirely a bad thing.
As you grow up,
you will learn to appreciate
the complexity of your solar systems
and you will not need to open up your veins
to see the planets hiding underneath your skin.

Little girl,
this pain will not last forever
and if I could, I would go back to you-
little girl sobbing naked in a bath tub
she turned red with her own blood-
and I would lull you to sleep,
spare you the tears and the scars and the ache.
But your pain will teach you lessons
that no happiness could have;
one day you will rise from the ashes
like a phoenix, wings held high,
engulfed in the flame of your former self.
And you will be so proud.

Come to me.
I want to open up your chest
and show you the galaxies I see in your heart,
pumping out into every part of your body,
your flesh like one giant constellation
that I could not ever wish to unlearn.

Come to me.
I want to feel your hair on my lips
and tell you about how each and every hair
feels like a blessing on my cracked mouth;
what an honor it is to taste you,
to taste your skin, to taste your soul.

Come to me.
We don't have to say a word.
Talk to me with your hands
and I'll answer back with my mouth.
That will be enough.