You held my hand, only for a second before my veins turned to poison. I was burning form the inside and my skin turned red, right on my cheeks. My sentences crashed and turned to dust around me, fallen like autumn leaves and an abandoned church. You were not making me nervous with your touch, I was not a schoolgirl heated by attention. Your hand was a manacle and damn the ones who thought you were harmless. You lie now, with your eyes closed and bloodshot, your skin cold and pale. Your words now still poison as before and sometimes I find myself wishing you were as dead as you look.

Way down deep in the places The Others don’t go, I look at the mangled weeds, pulled up by our dirty hands that only search for the physical reassurance of beauty. I am all blonde hair and feet on the ground. I am all mean words and dead stares. I am all the stubborn in half the body. I am the deep, I am the shallow. Upturned roots and soil, loosened up like face powder. I am much like the Earth, for she is beautiful before trying. For she will never be gone. For she is unforgiving. For she does not sway. For she is hot and she is cold and she is fire and she is ice. 

You are my home, you are my safety. When I am looking for a comparison I look no farther than to you. The happiest moments in my life all fight for stances next to you and the saddest times too, wailing and thrashing against arguments with you and bruises from you and separation from you. You are the one person who brings out the two sides of me, you are the extraction that the most extreme parts of me leap towards when they get a hold of the scent. If you bring out the part of me, heating up like a slab of concrete in sunlight, how is it that you’ve also created the girl who can turn a glass of water to a few broken shards and a solid brick of hatred?

On my lover’s lips, I taste like watermelon bubblegum and sin. In my lover’s mind, I smile like the sun and I sing like an angel. In my lover’s mind I am God and he is waiting to be baptized. Oh, in my lover’s eyes there is nothing brighter than my heart. Nothing bigger than my soul. Oh, to my lover. My lover. he tastes like vanilla and peaches. Oh my lover, cloaked in a personal scent of leather, soap and cigarette smoke. Oh, he is God and I am waiting to be baptized. He tastes like sin, and sin will save me from this life without a lover. 

Mr. Magic Man, you wear that watch everyday. You wear it to tell time, but tell time what? Do you tell time to slow itself, so when you go 90 miles an hour on the freeway, your journey still takes as long as it would if you walked to your destination? Do you tell time that it is not real, that when you live a whole day, it could’ve been the blink of an eye, according to the conscious universe that could tell the story of your life in one word? You say you wear a watch to tell time, but time is telling you. 

She is an arrow shot to the sky like a blinding rage, a final declaration of something words could not even say. Clear like the glass windows of a skyscraper, somehow still blurry like a windshield in a hurricane. Fast like a tornado but patient like a boat anchored to the forgotten floors of Atlantis. Her hair, gold like the fire in her eyes and her feet on the floor. Humble as the soul but proud as the crown. She is strong like the bricks and beams of a church and faithful like the pews and altar. One of a kind, she is a part of the earth that belongs to no fence. 

Looking into your eyes meant that all of the undefined variables in my self-made equation were now known and the problem solved. Solved faster than I could think about how pretty your eyes were. In a moment, some words danced through your lips and salted the air and that salty air became the answer I was always looking for and never finding. As soon as you said the beautiful things that create a sound night’s sleep, I knew. The cracks in my heart were just to fit more love for you there. I had fractured my hands so many times just so my hands could fold better into yours. My body was a home, the accommodations all specially made for you. 

This is my house. And a house is not always a home. This is both. This house is my home. I built my home with my own two hands and when my hands were not able, my mind was thinking of home. And when things seemed too distant and hands unable and mind weary, my soul was planning and my heart was beating like a hammer pounding nails, reminding me that soon I would have my home. I built this house when it was hot outside and when I was cold on the inside. When i was ailing, when i was straying, when i was graying. Devoid of color i built until i bled in color again. i built with my hands and with my soul. Here i stand until i am no more. And if my home burns down or is blown away, maybe even whisked to sea, if it is taken from me… i will stand where the walls used to be and look around like there are still windows. I will stand upon the ashes. And should it rain again, should the water mix with the dust… Should i be knee-deep in dead mud, i will not leave. And should i die, in my home, my body will lie. 

Your silence gives me too much room to scream at myself. And I try so hard to hear what you are saying but since you say absolutely nothing that I think you are thinking I try oh so very hard to read between the lines. And reading between the lines is hard to do when there are three words in one group, no punctuation and no capital letters. No lines to read between… you are so cold.

It is 2:14 in the morning and I have not yet fallen asleep. I am listening to the sound of rain and smiling to myself because I feel happy that I am loved by you. Somewhere in my mind, I finally drift off to sleep despite my itching discomfort and thunder clatter lightning bolt thoughts. It is 5:12 in the morning now, and I am getting a text that says I do not have to work today and I halfway drift back to halfway sleep, this time, thoughts of you do not swim around my skull. I am actually thinking of the way I sleep most comfortably if I recall. It is 12:00 noon and I am awake now. My bedroom is dark despite the sun shining outside. I’ve had a nightmare. You were there. I felt alone and unloved. You were being distant. I woke up crying. My house feels like no one is living inside of it. Like everyone went on vacation but forgot to turn the kitchen light off. Sometimes my body feels the same way. 

Old habits die hard and then with their dead hands they un-dig their neat little graves. They come back to life. Old habits die hard. Just look where I am now. I am barefoot and my feet are both bloody. I can’t find a shirt to put on over the broken skin of my torso. The engagement ring crushed between my palms is a few sizes too small and the diamond burns a hole through my resolve and turns to a ruby with a few drops of my indignant blood. He used to say I had a face like a princess, but now all he knows is that I am the queen. I kiss like a goddess, move in circles like a spin-top and hide like a fugitive. Royalty nonetheless. I curse like a sailor and I hate like the devil. I sin like a killer and I live under no set of rules. Morality is nothing to someone like me. Someone who always does the wrong thing. 

My dear, there is a look on your face. All drawn eyebrows and pursed lips and doubting eyes. My dear there is a look on your face and like the cover of a novel I can guess what is on the inside. You’ve a great talent for telling yourself with no words. You’ve a great talent of making yourself a screaming declaration out of a silent body. All brooding body language, all stoic eyes. Your jawline set on the silence and your smirk set on the prize. The Number One Book according to the New York Times and when they make a movie of your life, I want to play the love interest.