My lover saves his words,
he tucks them under his tongue

I chew on his serifs,
Aerated, punctuated, hyphenated
His desires, they get caught in my teeth
the boldness of them wearing on my enamel

And then,
his smile melts onto my tongue
I push it behind my cheek, our own
little secret, sweetheart
Now I’m smiling too

And he hasn’t said a word.

She says,

Smile more
He says,
Look you got to freak out a little less
And I wait
They say if you’re quiet enough,
You start to hear your own voice
I can’t decide if that’s a good thing
He picks me up and I dumb myself down
Rinses me down while I size myself up
Width is still one word I can’t say without biting my tongue too much at the end

He is a head and a half taller than me and I have memorized this from the way his eyes are always downcast, and I,
Am always reaching for the hot, wet peak of his tongue

There is a dull pain in my neck but it shies in comparison to the dormant ache,
Asleep between my thighs
With calculated moves he stirs it to a raging fire
Even when I swear there’s enough humidity in the room to blanket this desire

He licks his lips, and they are the semi-perfect shade of vermillion glossed over with evil intent
And he swivels me around and whispers, turn around, when his body is already draped across the arch of mine

And in this moment, being this close,
friction is enough to **** me

Who are we kidding
when we place a bottle to our lips and
try to call it a marriage of some sort
the last thing I remember
a straw between my teeth then
your ear in its place
fast forward to me counting the steps to your door
1, 2, 3.. 6.. 14..25
I was barely 13 before I was taught love was a call to arms,
not a veritable verb
you told me it was good enough
holding it in my palm
and really I should’ve known
when every attempt at romance was nothing above a whisper
how I was your best kept secret at 15

at 19, I still unravel under the influence
my cup is empty from the nights I gave you so much it
tumbled
into the morning after but all that was left to grab at was
your hair on my pillow,
you were spontaneous like that, weren’t you?
and I,
hey, why won’t you just lighten up?
You fancied flight and I only wanted the pebbles
crushed beneath my plimsolls
telling me all I ever needed to know,
that
the smallest only get stifled more
and before I knew it
I was a crushed up beer can,
insides still wet ******* it
coursing real liquid in real time
just
so
I could live to love you
and you tell me, sobriety hurts
like I’m only beautiful when I’m a blur
oh sweetheart,
if only you knew how pretty your eyes were
before they rolled to the back of your head,
and sweetheart,
I hope you make it home tonight.

and that home,
is you retching on the floor,
on your knees because that’s where you liked me best.

The cracks in his palm give me just enough room to slip into them

Waist deep
Sandwiched between hot flesh
And oxygenated blood
From all the breaths he stole from my lungs
We love with open mouths and open limbs
What we do is more than just a fist slamming against a palm
It is not dirt I gather under my fingernails
But the primal way we learnt to stake our claim
I am digging into muscle
You are drilling into bone