the clouds looked like waves,
we lay, accumulated underneath them,
like lost souls, scattered like dust,
like wingless leaves, like our drifting fingers,
tracing stars, writing our names into them.

it wasn’t raining, but it festered on the brink of,
like a lover holding back, like an abuser, keeping his fist clenched shut,
like us, trying not to roll over the other,
trying not to steal each other's innocence.
maybe we just wanted to be corrupt,
maybe we taught sin with these lips we held agape,
trembling over fragile words, trembling over hollow bones,
like these knobby knees, dancing over damp earth,
dancing under a bleeding moon, and these arms we called our feathers,
unfolded into frostbit air, but stitched around mountains of spine.

we’ve forgotten what it means to fall,
because we just creep now, afraid to find the edge,
afraid our bodies will dissolve into the soil,
we once before tried to bury ourselves in,

the clouds swayed, forming around each other to fit,
gripping one another, like our own hands did.
we smiled, bodies sinking into embers.

I prayed we’d find the waves and get lost in them,
you said we already were.