BREAKNECK LURCHING LOVER

autumn dedications: to grief, loving, soft girls, and, violent girls

I have long since known your knees: bruised, palsied by prayer. By evening, those devoted dusks, jaws unhinged to press to palms. Breathless. We loved each other – as much as either of us could have back then.

Those stretches of silence, those vast bodies. Light years crammed into a summer, a fall, half of a winter, and several heaving breaths. I was in love with you – as much as I ever could have been. And I do, love you, even now. Breathlessly, cosmically.

There, in the cemetery by your house. It’s been humid and I’ve grown hungry. And you aren’t home – you weren’t ever home. But now, I had heard that you were; you had come home, at last. And where was I? Scribbling in a book for you, sprawled under some sprinkler, fracturing. Consider me: assassinated by the greed and hopelessness of loving, shattering. Starving and breaking. I had never known the sight of devotion –not until you, and my chest quaked beneath it. You might have done anything for me. And I might have let you. Haha, look at me now: your doorstep, begging. Meet me here, please. After all of this, my darling – please.

There, in the process of decomposing into the soil, you arrive, sweating. One of us is shimmering and the other is panting. And I have never known how to stop. How to stop begging, pleading, needing, fleeing. I have never stopped running. But in roundabout ways I have always ended up back here, at your feet, dear.

Blood is mixing with the water in my mouth. You are sparkling. You know, you always shimmered in my dreams, fragmented into abstract memories. I projected you onto everything I had ever known. You had festered your way into every living thought I had. And haha – you didn’t even know it. And then, a raven crows overhead. Lands on a headstone: “What do you want from me?” You murmur, breathless. The sprinkler stops, and my chest heaves, fracturing, decomposing. What have I ever been allowed to want? I’m afraid I’ve been dying – and so far gone in the process of starvation that the thought never occurred. Dying has never necessitated wanting. Only running, shattering, laughing.

I would collapse into you, consider incineration, but instead turn my head into your collarbone. I had never done that before, in all of our years of friendship. Being doomed necessitated selfishness – I reasoned, and that wasn’t wanting, that was necessity. I didn’t reply, distracted by the fresh dirt of a grave nearby. But, I craned my chin up. Finding that strip of clavicle that could perhaps haze my breath and hide the cemetery, hide the abdication.

And in the pearlescent humming, haha–the perturbed haze: With your lips against my cheek, your hair flushed to your temple, my gums aching, and my body ablaze – I considered my death. My descent into madness, my funeral, and my very own grave. Desire. Loving. Being loved. It was juvenile – and my wanting, as much as I refuse to accept it, was only the aching fester of your delightful bones pressing into me. I fretted only because you weren’t nearly close enough.

I have long known the weight of your ribs as they dig through me. They never stopped; I don’t think. I might still be there, caught between gravestones, fracturing. I tore into you, too. Detached my jaw to reach as far in as I dared without letting my chin touch you. For, I had known that feeling too – I still do. Your hands wrapped delicately around my jaw to tug me into you, thumbing that soft part of my lower lip. In the perpetuation of starvation: delicate hands offer only the kindest meals, and we cannot afford to rely on such lovely delights. We are ridiculous, volatile creatures, and I have only ever known how to love you pleadingly – in forms jolting, pre-collision, in these years of hindsight that follow.

To stop begging, pleading, needing, fleeing. Fleeing. Fleeing. I have never found a way to separate myself from my starvation. To run, duck between wires and get caught by closing doors, I have never let my starvation learn satiation. Breakneck and furious, I yearn for love, and I yearn for you. Hopelessly, heedlessly. To set you alight, eat you whole, and be done with you. As if I ever could, you’ve held the reins since the start. And here we are. Six feet. Eternal.