It started out with gravel and bruising spines,
with my hands wound round your throat and your fingers,
scraping skin from my wrists.
It started out with a dark sun, hiding itself behind the hairs of trees,
unmoving like asleep, or dead.
the streets were empty, and quiet like how I wanted you to be,
but you were screaming and begging for rescue,
and I just wanted to bury your head underwater,
or between my thighs, anchoring you there, immobile.

It was noon but it felt like dusk,
the wind was nothing but a fragile, empty gasp from your lungs,
and the shaking ground enveloping us, was not an earthquake,
nor a crashing plane, just your begging-for-breath, body
and our own fears settling tightly around our clayed bones.
And the wet on my face wasn’t from rain, or hailing skies,
it was from the flood of words you tried to drown me in,
us in.

“I want you to disappear”
you yelled
and I replied,
“I would disappear, as long as I had you, beside me”

It felt like it was snowing but the sun was burning roses into our naked chests,
it felt like winter, maybe because your fingers felt that of a dead man's,
or perhaps it was because we were both slowly fading away under a fiery sky,
thawing out, and then being left to dry.

we had these eyes of ours, woven shut, and these screams we worshiped, webbed into pleading sobs and pitiful amends.
I felt like a sinner, and you felt like a priest, blessing this unholy vessel I remained in.

a bruise was blossoming around your neck, holding on as if my hand was still kept there.
I turned my body into a cave and you turned yourself into it, as though you were a beggar, seeking shelter, seeking warmth, seeking something.

It was dusk, but it felt like we were already dead.