it is winter

and i am walking with a boy whose hair speaks louder than his confusion. the imprint of my rejection still hangs on his lips; the steel wool sky has swathed us in tongue-tied silence

he is a mess of dark curls and unsure hands

he could never hold onto me

because i run and don't tell my legs where to go. it's easier that way - fewer bodies to count if i don't stay to see them pass

some names stick longer than others

i had to peel his off the roof of my mouth

it tasted like blood

i think about that boy some days, how he held his steering wheel like strangulation

how i held him like strangulation;

asphyxiation is one of the most peaceful ways to die, but suffocating under the pillow talk of mouths long lost was never the right way to go;

very little left to mask the sound of his grief in the tangled sheets

a mistake

to love the girl whose heartbeat is more battle cry than lullaby

to whom nakedness is a second nature;

i see things with my hands

every spare touch sacred in conveying what language cannot

he gave me arms,

wrapped them around parts of myself i forgot could be treated with care

somehow more real when i could feel all of him under my fingertips

all bone and sinew

nothing to hide under skin stretched over muscle; like if he were made of anything more, there would be secrets living inside of him, too

i crush the windpipe of honesty like i don't dance with the skeletons buried in my backyard

like i didn't know i was the only bold move he would ever make

a preface to the next boy

the lesson in remembering that he

with the quiet mouth that came too late

was no more godlike

than my father.

his features are buried in the crushed velvet lungs of every boy breathing life back into my own, embroidering his shadow in those tangled sheets with the sound of his grief

a personal reminder that i am the sharpest weapon i know

that i am living in a state of disintegration

of wearing names and places out

until there is nothing left but threadbare vessel

patchwork elbows and well worn kneecaps

i am always washing prose down the drain with the hair dye

it's never breathtaking or eloquent, but it all holds bits of me;

it's never quite enough

to love me is to love a midas of decay

everything i touch is not meant to last

you will laugh with me like it will bring you closer to heaven, even though we both don't really believe

and when your song is muffled by suffocating memory

you will remember that i was forged

not with fire and brimstone

but with paper and pen

nothing hard enough to build a foundation on which to stand

nothing but flammable romanticism

everything i touch is not meant to last

only my touch is meant to last

and it will cling to every unspoken part of you - a chalk outline of all the notches my mouth has carved into your spine

no one can really love a weaponized ribcage,

a body made of blades

all i have been trained to do is guard my own splintered heart with a bloody grip;

i am waiting for the day where i don't flinch at the sight of my own hands.