I picture myself crushing
an orange, star-shaped pill.
Pressing a bit into your palm as we exit your RV.
"I probably shouldn't," you hesitate,
but I press on.
"Just try a little. You'll like it. I promise."
So we taxi away,
lacing sticky fingers around each other
and plastic cups of beer.

We lean into electrifying music
that sounds like an emergency room or an ongoing migraine,
but the tremors feed us.
You pluck a styrofoam light saber off the ground and hand it to me.
I watch its blues melting into greens dripping into reds and orange-yellows and it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

You claim you don't feel It,
shrugging all cool and nonchalant.
So what’s with your magnetic gaze,
or the way your trembling fingertips trace my lips?
Why are we tangled up like this, all wordless and gooey?
And what about your pupils—the way they are filling up your eyes?

“Well,” you concede.
“It just makes me want to have *** with you.”
But it’s more than that!
Every moment vibrates with magic!
And all I want is you
and the sensation of skin
against bare skin
and to be enveloped in that warmth again.
I relish the blurring of our lines,
the way I can’t tell when my trip ends or yours begins.

And in the hours that creep towards the sunrise we plant
ourselves on the dock.
Fill our lungs with smoke.
Count the patterns moving through the lazy black tides.
And you tell me all these profound things you’ve never mentioned before.
And I forget almost all of them.

But the thing is
We are falling in love.
You could never say It,
so I have to.
And I don’t want it to feel intense or weird—
but there’s intensity and weirdness already
brewing beneath the surface of our interactions and
now that I let It in
you feel too far away from me
when you’re only across town.
And there’s not enough of you
to swallow me whole
And It scares me.
And It comforts me.

Because you love me
even when I can’t bear to be loved,
and I unravel
because somehow I know – I’ve always known –
that you’ll never hurt me
worse than he did.