in the grand scheme of things, he’s the trees and I’m the river and the stones are always, always covered in blood

2. he keeps looking at me over his shoulder and I don’t know if it’s because he knows I’m lying or if he’s checking to see that I’m still alive

3. he told me I was a god, some free and ruthless and holy thing and I told him he was the sun and we’re both waiting on the test results to see who won

4. he smiles like an animal, too much teeth, gapped and bleeding, too much dirt stuck to his gums, lips sticky and eyes burning holes into me

5. I never thought I’d be afraid of the way the light hits the earth, quietly and all at once, but I am and it feels like I should be on my knees and praying to something I know doesn’t exist for me

6. in the grand scheme of things, neither of us is a bird or fragile or something precious to hold onto, and both of us know this, which makes it worse

7. he isn’t some winged holy thing

8. he hung the stars and told me how lovely I was in the lighting

9. he put a gun in his mouth until I could taste the sting of it, metal coating my insides, until I was the one bleeding iron bullets

10. he handed me his plastinated heart and told me to swallow it whole so I did

11. he said a lot of things and I mostly don’t remember them because I was too busy knitting us together at the seams of our broken bones, two skeletons in the same grave, some kind of poetic fate

12. or, that’s how I’ll say it happened