I fell in love for the first time on the edge of a burgundy seat. You were not there. Only the crowd and their hands and a stage and words. The words of a man whose stubs you’d turned into legs in a matter of breath caught mine. My whole life seemed a prelude, a pause for breath always meant to be borrowed from you. I closed my eyes and took you in. I learnt for the first time how it felt to breathe by the Book.
2. We’d fallen into a silent-servant-who’ll-write-a-page-but-never-raise-a-word-of-mouth kind of love. I’m a bashful piece of a lady with nothing more than a writer’s willing hands. I’m better found making things out of moments so I made a home for you in what had become of my heart: A furnace, with only your name in the walls of its memory.
3. Death has a way of tapering the curtain from the blink of your eye, has a way of leaving a view that calluses your heart, has a way of drying up your bones and your throat and your mouth and your love, so Love, I can no longer sing of you when I’m alone, can no longer hold candles or burn sacrifices for you. The furnace has tapered, but I do remember you. Every day. I am neither brave nor stupid enough to say you broke or put me out, but the writing is on the walls.
4. On the days that I think of you I will always close my eyes and pray that you’ll breathe the death out of me. Borrow me more than a moment on a burgundy seat, prepare a table for me and we will feast in the presence of death.