I would write to you if only I could.

But I can't distract myself from my own head; it just hasn't been quiet around here since my mind first started humming with the idea of loving you.

Knowing your soul like my own would blossom within me like a sprawling forest.

But while you're still unsure, I'm just wandering through the leaves.

And while I'm gone, I'll bet the trees pray to be dead just so they don't have to listen to me talk about you again.

But I ache with sorrow for their misunderstanding,

Because you are a song I will sing until it hurts anywhere above a whisper.

There is a sky outside that I want no part of.

I know that once I speak through the cracks, the glass will give way and my voice will catch in the wind,



and you will fear my flash floods and you will leap over puddles and you will refuse to be caught up in the rain even though it is you that I weep for.

You were thinking about God all night. If only you could without suffering sin, you’d swear it was true. Prayers clung to the gloss on your lips. You’d shaken your hair loose from the day’s mistakes, apologized for those that you chose to remember. But still, your body was a live wire.

Your fingers were knotted up in the chain of your grandmother’s cross when your first stranger offered you a drink. His smile boasted of layover stays in European cities, of glassy-eyed girls spread just for him, all neat and pretty on a silk duvet. You swallowed down your fears and let him order for you, just nodding his way so he wouldn’t get to hear your voice. A scotch on the rocks to ease your nerves, you reassured Him, and nothing more.

Let me slip into something a little more comfortable…you breathed easier in a strapless dress, a tight skin of black satin worth half of a month’s rent and all of your dignity. Eyes you didn’t recognize skimmed over more of your body than you let your own mother see. The little girl she raised would have been afraid. The good Lord Himself was a skeptic, a dwindling shadow of a doubt still stuck in the doorway. …She’s so exposed, can she really offer any more parts of herself to the world, or has it all gone?

You’d just gotten done with praying for the ****** when one of them shows up at your feet to thank you. You try to forget. You don’t want to remember that you asked for her in your sleep. She is a gift…not from God. You feel as you would have if you had seen her naked. Her white dress wraps high enough around her neck to make you second-guess your hands.

Touch…The thought hits you like a freight train and makes you sway. She laughs, guess I shouldn’t have gotten you this drink, huh? You’re halfway finished with the glass she gave you before you tell her you’re okay.

A hangover may keep you from church in the morning.

Just seemed like you needed to unwind.

God would have healed your heart then. Only you start to think now that the pain of someone else may be what keeps you alive.

Maybe a dance will help.

Her hand is warm as she leads you out onto the floor. Instead of letting go, her fingers squeeze the spaces in between yours. She leans in so she can hear you speak above the pounding of the bass. When she tosses her hair, she smells soft, like fresh roses. You feel her thorns press into your sides like the fingernails digging into your chest, and the pain breathes new life into you.

She dances up against you with her body like a hurricane. The shallow breaths against your neck are no longer just that. They are howling gusts, a swirling mass of a storm that comes to life in glaring black-and-white headlines, “disaster of the ages”, “the bullet you can’t outrun”. They are screaming at you to get a grip before you crash to the ground, another casualty in her wake.

Her hand swims up your dress to touch you between your thighs. You let her. It’s okay. You ease into her, let your eyes roll back for her. You kiss her unholy, her tongue tasting like redemption. The strokes of her fingers take you as close to Heaven as you’ll ever get.

Forgive me, Father, for I am sin.

Her hair may smell like sweet summer rain and her smile always settles weirdly in your stomach, but she is poison. She is a toxic cocktail garnished with cigarette smoke that reminds you of the night you came too close to kissing her. She is unattainable, she is right beside you and yet your fingertips cannot ever quiver hard enough to close the gap between you and her.

You crave her so desperately. You would be humbled to fall apart for her. At her feet, you’d make your bed, and there you would stay all alone through the night, dreaming of how she swore she’d come back for you. There you will stay while the dawn filters in through the drapes, while the sharp rays of early morning light are all that is there for you to blame for your tears. She will not come back because boys will be boys, with their tousled hair and heavy brows and all of their hard edges, and she will love them for that. No matter how hard she bleeds before he gives way for her, she will melt into him.

She wears your sorrows like a dress gown. You tell her past the knot in your throat that she looks gorgeous. Your palms itch; it takes everything in you to not smooth down the ripples in the fabric around her hips. Her night skin’s being shed by calloused hands within her first hour out at the bar. And in a few hours’ time, she’s battling her hangover with her head in your lap while you comb through the mess of her hair and tell her that she still deserves better. She says she knows that already.

What she doesn’t know is that you do, too.