A love like pomegranate seeds — I am condemned to a mortal marriage with Death, waiting for his hands to touch me in the winter; I am stuck inside an autumnal equinox, waiting for the spring. My mind is a brothel — filthy and thoughts floating in and out but not looking for any sort of commitment. But you say that my brain is efflorescent and something lovelier than I would believe. There are cities in the palms of my hands, once teeming with life like the Great Barrier Reef, but now moan the silent sounds of desolation within a Chernobyl wasteland; but you are roaming the ashes atop my fingertips like a lost child trying to unearth the memories of her mother beneath the rubble of a shaken faith, despite knowing she was lost forever in the wake of brutal destruction, kicking me left and right as though I were the collapsed mountain of infrastructure in the wake of early September, 2001. I say all this to confirm that I do miss your voice and its fluidity on the phone — I miss your voice even though I know you'll hang up, and I wish I felt that way about living. I only want you to hold my sticky heart like melted candy.  I want you to stop sighing and slumping in your chair like the names of every Holocaust victim is engraved on your eyelids. I want you to smile like an innocent child, for once.