"He never broke my heart. He only turned it into a compass that always points me back to him." – Clementine von Radics
Austin’s eyes make me cry because they look like they were scraped from the underbelly of Venus & set to sear on the fires of Pluto & I think his eyes could burn through unseen galaxies & scorch through black holes so that we could fold the universe in two & crawl through those holes back to where it all began
Austin’s arms make me cry because they feel like they’ve been weathered by the gods & the terror they cast down when Zeus doesn’t get to sleep with the girl he wants to & they feel like hot water on a cold day like that burning feeling that disappears the longer I wait there even though my stomach is threatening to leave my chest
Austin’s voice makes me cry because it rings at a pitch that only I can hear & sounds like a truth I’ve never heard when he says “I love you” & it drips like honey from a hive straight into my amygdala making my languid muscles turn shades of purple and gold like it’s finally come alive again
Austin’s dimples make me cry because when he smiles it’s like Aphrodite & the Kharites came together & made a smile so powerful that everyone can feel it inside their lungs even the ones too gray to ever heal & if those dimples could be bottled up & injected into my veins they would travel through my vena cava straight to the place that I can’t even find anymore
Austin’s brain makes me cry because it sets fire to mine & when he thinks I can hear his musings in my head like they are my own thoughts & they blaze through pathways lighting up neurons that I thought would always be dark & they lead to mermaids & faeries & things too beautiful to touch but those things are there in my skull waiting to be set free
Austin’s hands make me cry because I didn’t know/I didn’t think/I didn’t believe that anything so gentle could even exist on someone when men have always wrapped their hands too tightly around my wrists & have always pulled me into places I never wanted to see & have always grabbed my hips & twirled them around in every direction until I was too dizzy to see & too confused to say no when their hands made their way into that lace that never seemed to keep anyone out
Austin makes me cry because there is a person in the milky way who smells like kindness & looks like lavender & he makes me want to lay in the sun during a rainstorm & I never knew/I never thought/I never imagined that flowers could grow in rib cages until I crawled inside his. I never thought he’d use my body like an ashtray, leaving behind burning things when he was finished. I guess all that crying was for nothing.
