We are all addicted to something that's killing us, but makes our pain go away,
and when I helped you stumble from parking garage into the dewey moon speckled asphalt, you swam out into the street like you didn’t notice your waterlogged chest was leaking.
I followed you to the hidden brook.
We crashed into each other and fell onto the wet grass
and I secretly asked it to drink us up.
But your fingertips swallowed my palm like a parched fish, and I wondered how you could still be so thirsty.
The stars bathed your pale skin in a gleaming light show,
so I traced my own constellations and named them after your smile.
The way you kissed me, it was like you were afraid of breaking me.
But baby, you tasted like explosives,
and later, you drove me home with burns in my cheeks.
Through the window, the watery red moonlight plastered your face in speckled crimson.

You left a somber sound below my brain,
deep enough that whales have called back to me through the dark.
You are the gravity that swings blood through the blue highways under my skin
and floods my flushed cheeks when I’m pulled into your arms.
Your hands have long since graced my back
or cheek,
or wrists,
but your fingertips wrote love letters on the surface of my skin
which I admire every night after my head goes quiet;
When my thoughts rest on your charming lips, and hands;
when they whip through your hair like the wind of my breath
to find your eyes,
tongue,
and teeth,
and guide your waist with the sway of the sea.

And now I find myself missing the nights when you'd kiss self worth into my skin under the glowing canopy of red christmas lights and cinnamon whiskey, when I’d write stories on your back and pull the sky around your shoulders and pretend that I didn’t notice that your thighs are smaller than mine.
I’d ignore the fact that I could feel every gram of fat on my body rubbing up against itself, shifting under my stretching skin,
my jiggling oily layers caked in something more shameful than sin.
Because at the time, your kisses were my only testaments to the fact that I deserved to take up space.
And I know that you’ve held somebody who hates themselves in your arms before
because when I tell you that you’re beautiful, her echo chokes out “No I’m not”.
So I tell you that you better learn to love yourself like I do,
because I never. want. to hear. her. voice. again.
I don’t tell you that sometimes, it feels like there is a living breathing monster tucked in the corners of my mirrors and underneath my toilet seat,
because I never want you to think that its your responsibility to save me when you’re still drowning.