on fire and tossing in cold dreams
in a glass house where your voice is echoing.
it’s a strange faith, now of all times, but still;
the pattern of moles on your back is more inherent than constellations,
the gods drawn there are soft.

i am still in possession of the night,
still possessed, of that which was
dimly lit and outside
of who we are outside each other, and now
i’m only
horribly aware of the beauty of your shoulders falling,
shut down brain, shut down hands desperately
turning to birds in your hair

hollow bones and
movements, words you said into the back of my ear
i’m keeping clutched under the flapping skin of my breast, open
to the cold air of this early dying november.
but i know how unfair that is.
i know what this looks like.

others have left me purple and painted, oozing
with fake laughter and lies about what i need. but for once,
because i could love you;

i could love you. their eyes don’t matter,
nor does the extraneous world
keeping our ribcages iron stiff, shut.
it is not possible for us to save each other,
but we could make a home in your sheets, and
that’s the closest
we’ll ever get.

so because i could love you; this is cutting me open.
i think about your hands all the time.