Squinting,
I focus on your two hands with precise laser vision.

Those hands I swore as the blood fills my veins that I knew their cellular intention as well as I savored my own muscle memory of you.

The hands that were magnets, my body first drawn to the heat of them
While I scrutinize every slight movement of
Those fingers and palms
That touched every part of me

Inside and out

Those same skin covered bits of muscle tendon and fibers of nerves
Betrayed me too.

Just like you did.

You couldn’t keep your hands to yourself

How did they feel when they touched the not me?

Any remorse; guilt? (or not enough, anyway)

So I watch them like a hawk, the right hand, the left hand.

My eyes dart back and forth,
Eagle eye boring deep beneath the epidermis to the pulsing veins and bones and sinew.

I turn your hand over to the ******* and trace your lifeline

Searching for that one moment where the decision was made to touch not me

They must’ve stroked and groped and caressed and penetrated the same sort of body parts like me, but different-the not me.

The hands in unison that pulled me to you for that embrace, the one you know which one I’m talking about

Ever vigilant to the conception of time the time that was before and not now
The hands that deceived and destroyed me.

The now indifferent hands, the now careless touch
Me
And
Now not me.

“Open,” he said, his lips curling upwards,
eyes dancing with the smoke of mischief and chardonnay.
“How does that work exactly?”
My skin met yours and birthed a heat between us.
“It just does.  You can’t expect only one person to complete you”

His mouth pressed against mine.
I pushed the idea of his wife out of my head,
Focusing on the scruff marring my chin.
Perhaps I was too curious,
Too eager,
Too naïve,
Too
Wanting…

He pulled away.
“This is enough”

He left and my skin echoed for his touch,
Caressed by the same places as his wife.
Taking a piece of her into my mouth
and swallowing it whole.

and you dare stand up from the sheets where our body fluids have mixed and dried, wordlessly dressing yourself up and leaving the echo of the door closing in your wake and just you ******* wait i'm going to lace your tea with poison, and oh, isn't it just unfortunate that your house has this terribly long staircase and your wife just always had to wear frighteningly high heels?

but then again, you'd like that, wouldn't you? you at my mercy just like a few hours ago when i pinned your wrists above your head and your pelvis under the curve of my ****, painfully teasing you with the slow drag of my hips, impaling myself on you, raising myself up so so slowly until only the head of your **** catches on the lips of my entrance and i slam myself back on you, as you gasp and gasp and gasp, begging for release, for mercy, like the pathetic lover you are with your cries spurring me on, the trembles of your body betraying you, betraying your wife, but never betraying me because you know, ******* you, you know, deep inside, that you are mine—you are mine and i will never let you go

gyrating hips
and blood red lips
****** thoughts
drift across,
seeping into the silk sheets
beneath her heat.
fire set alight
at the sight
of the small porcelain frame
draped in the skin of an angel
with the devil singing her name.
“nothing is good anymore
this i am sure”
she says,
counting petals that fall to the floor.
mischievous grin
locked on lips of sin,
and she can’t help the need
to bound forth and see,
naked glass
shattered from the days of past
with sand spilling pages
into unknown cages
opening eyes
to all the cherry red lies.
blood flowing over head and underneath
the infidelity that lives in his sheets,
lost kisses and broken hearts
left to be made into art.

I always thought that I'd see you again
corn teeth and bloodshot eyes

We were young, in college
and always high

The gun under you pillow
didn't seem so strange

We hiked, drank, sang
watched old movies all day

It was months before I knew
you were sharing a bed with another

I hated you for making me feel foolish
and ****** you after you cried

You weren't found for weeks
and neither was she

I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
For her, for you, for me

I'm taunted by another,
Allured by the attention,
Polishing vanity to a reflective glaze,
Like a winner's cup, held up by the ears,
To display, kiss, and smudge,
Then returned to the rightful owner.
It's an enviable snare,
One may think is sincere,
From here, looking over there.

a smile, a look, a touch
is all that's needed for them to think
you belong with me
(you do)
but you are not mine
not in ways they presume
when they see us together
and the ever shrinking space between us

you are not mine in ways that are well trodden
of obligation, of possession, of labels

but you belong with me
in ways that matter
in the way we talk just to each other
in the congruency of our thought
in the importance we have for us
in laughter and sadness
in sickness and in health

they look at us and they presume
but they can never know
how deeply I belong to you