I'm going to love you like the floorboards do. I'm going to touch you like your bedroom walls never could; lay your forehead against me like the shower wall and try to recount every lie you ever told laying down. Your nails will hold me against the headboard in a dark act of crucifixion; I have been dying of your sins since before I understood that they were not the kinds that I should love, and perhaps this is not the kind of love that ends well on glossy pages but it is the only love I know. I was a nearly dead stray on your doorstep and you fed me pretty words from your hands like you knew how to take care of things that had no home (despite having never had one of your own). You know too well how your name sounds when your hand is on my knee, you know too well how your name sounds when you are coaxing the life out of me, as though my trachea were the back door of your apartment, and you know how deadly you are with a look on your face that burns like the candles in a chapel but never melts - I sit vigil over your dead body but your ghost is always touching me, you are always bringing out the worst in me and stretching it out like sheets over a ****** mattress and I cannot take care of myself and I am incapable of breathing until you are watching me.