Please tell me why the scotch
Swirling around the glass
Stokes the fires in my soul
As it swirls playfully along my tongue
To incite the words brushing against the smoke as it leaves my breath

Till the glass is empty
and fires go cold

please
god please
come trace my collar with you lips and my freckles with you fingertips
because i miss the way you laughed along my neck
down that little indent in my palm
i want you to whisper to me
all we didn't get to say
as the night turns into the softest dawn

if I am unbecoming all the words you’ve never read
then I can take my time while I go walking through your head
you’ll never even see me and you’ll never even know
I’ll speak into your body, may it reap what it will sow

if I am unbecoming all the traits in me you knew
then I will be the mountain you will not know how to move
you’ll never even feel me and you’ll never even think
I’ll be with you forever, every single time you blink

but

if I am unbecoming all the words you’ve ever read
then I will pick my body up and bury it instead
you’ll find me in the in-betweens, in laughter and in sighs
I’ll be in every single breath, you never will know why

i don't know when
or why
but it changed

and it was in that heartbeat, in it's echoed refrain
i realized i would never feel like that again
about him.

and that was okay.

because the feel of my jeans grazing across his palms become better with repetition.
because the feel of his smile whisked my favourite lemon loaf into creation, filling itself with peace in this familiarity.
because the feel of his arms were not that of steel, but hearths; warming the depths of my being I did not know had gotten cold.

it would feel better

and that was okay.

in moments like this, i wonder
should i say thank you?
or scowl at my own tongue
because why must you be 'thanked'

for finding the beauty in the way a masterpiece i did not create became encased and enclosed around me? a heartbreaking masterpiece my soul hides behind.

but darling, really.

must i thank you?

dare I thank you for noticing

the way my hips flow like new streams
making their own path to once again embrace. finding themselves through pure instinct.

should i say thank you?

for seeing the same desire in me that Venus possessed in the arms of passion, the same ones lost to history we so seek to be held by?

or may i say thank you.

thank you for guiding me up the stairs that never end, winding along as I am, so that I may be, all that I am. Thank you for blindly reaching into the dark and choosing to love all that you touch...

even Eros would have loved you.

As your willful blindness and seeking touch brought me to the final step, so that I may say

thank you.

I am sick of this
beige
of the way it sits against my chest
so that I cannot feel
too much
or even too little

I would tell time to come here so that I may dine her, in hopes to speed up the process. but she is late for our dinner once more.

And so I sit, holding a beige cup, with a beige sweater, in a beige room. Hoping it’ll ever turn transparent, so I may start again.

we lost you
and part of me still doesn’t know that
but when I cried
speaking to him about how nothing will be the same and you’ll never get to hold little laughter and wipe little tears away
clinging to birthdays and little voices
he told me
that my hands
are extensions of you
so you will hold it all
the packages, the smiles, the screams, and the giggles.

and it made me smile—

thinking of the day you get to hold my Theo, with me.