i. for stories sake id like to say it was the first time you held my hand and part of me will always believe that but something else inside of me says it was the first time your fingers interlocked with mine and you knew you loved me. the silence between us was comfortable, you and i of course didn't need to say anything that our hands couldn't. your thumb stroking across my knuckles was all i really needed to begin my never ending stumbling for you, and the comfort i got from looking down and accepting our new attachment was the proof i needed that i would never, ever regain my balance as long as your fingers rested comfortably against mine. (they always will)

ii. i strike matches with more force than the first time you kissed me but they have the same effect (you shine light on the good) and that's what made me fall for you again. i think i was so scared to feel the curve of your mouth against mine because i feared that some of the illness i harbor would jump from my parted lips to yours and burn right through you, blistering your pretty skin. i realize now what little faith i had in your good nature and ability to still love me even though the bad swirls around inside of me like a forest fire. clearly you're the relief i need, for every time your breath meets a new spot of me i feel the ache inside of me begin to dull (as well as awaken something new) and i find the healing i wasn't even searching for in your touch.

iii. thoughts turned to words and words turned to line after line of you, my poem with feet, and i knew id fallen for you again. your very essence leaks through every stanza that slips from my mind and i can see the words falling from your eyes with every flutter of your dark, dark eyelashes; the only problem is that no matter how many ways i mix up the same 26 letters i can't properly express what you make me feel, and i think the sooner i realized that, the better off i was because your mouth on mine is the only poetry i really need.

when i was little, i spent a lot of time holding a book with bigger words than i was in my lap and i got told the difference between right and wrong. i crossed my hands and mumbled softly to Him but now i can barely cross my legs and when His name escapes my mouth it's rarely spoken softly and never looked to for guidance. my heart doesn't ache for Him like it aches for you and not to give you devine power but with your head between my thighs it's simple to see my prayers have been answered in the form of an earthly, living, being, not some mystical high creature. i may be caught on my knees in times of confusion but i can promise you this much, my pleas of His name will never be to make sense of what you do to me and your naked body on mine is all the saving ill ever need. all im trying to say is don't mistake my moans of "oh, god" as an excuse to drag me to the cross because what i need in that moment is to rewrite scripture down your back, my sins can remain for the night.

this isn't supposed to be poetic nor pretty but every time your name comes to mind all i can think about is the way you taste (like summer, freeing and bone chilling in the same way that my teeth chatter when we're holding hands at a parade and the temperature is way colder than it should be for october) and the sound of your breathing (more comforting than white noise and it keeps me warmer than wearing all of your coats at once ever could) and the way you hold me when you slip away to sleep (subconsciously tighter than before, like you need me, even in your dreams) and things feel okay even if they aren't because they will be, they always will be, and it isn't hard to tuck away the metal when i have you. i just don't need it, i don't need to ******* own blood because you'd offer to let me d r i n k yours if that's what it took, and that's enough to make me not need it at all. you're always putting me first but what you're blind to is that id throw myself in the way of any harm aimed towards you and id wrap myself around your heart if i could because once there's a crack more will branch off and i have to keep it from uprooting itself and shriveling to nothing right in my hands because the blood that i so desperately lust after would be left on my hands and that's something that i just can't wash off (nor would i scrub my hands raw ever again). i seem to have gained entrance inside you, with every brush of your mouth against my forehead i realize i don't want to ever leave, i won't ever leave, and good thing, too, because there seems to be no reentry allowed.