There are bruises on my skin from my last night with you,
I wear them like badges of merit you earned as a boy.
Purple smears underneath my freckled blades,
and the blue stains on my thighs tell the truth.

Tell the truth you said.

Without saying the words,
my body tells of a pretty heartache,
the one not everyone gets to experience.
I will call myself lucky,
and run my fingerprints over the marks you left,
the sentences you wrote with your teeth and all your pressure.
When they fade, and I can still feel the ache under the skin,
I will miss the colors that others could see.
That the proof I never told,
the truth will slip away,
but it will not heal.
The left shoulder blade has the most beautifully articulated bruise.
It is a splatter of violets and pinks, and my tiny freckles look like stars in a galaxy.
But I am a black hole,
and I will take the bruise under
eat it up and fear that I will do the same to the story, to your memory.
So I will drunkenly scrawl facts and moments and details in the space in my lungs and heart.
You admitted you knew the smell of the air in my lungs,
so when can you admit you love me,
at least in the dark?