intimate | one

lover, oh lover,

the night you first saw me was when i ripped the stars from the graves they'd crawl out of each night. i had just run away from my fate and was swimming in a sea of poison, drinking some in with each shot. you stood at the shore then, and you looked and looked and looked. and when i thought i was about to drown, you gave me your hand and held it to your heart. you looked at the violet on my cheek and that hint of a crimson clavicle that ran brighter than any lipstick ever would. you looked at the darkening brown under my eyes. you looked at the trickle of dried red below my nose. 

you had smiled then and told me i was beautiful. 

your hand didn't reach out to caress me as you listened to the age-old tale of 'one more chance' and 'one last fight' from my broken lips. i had wondered how easy it was to talk to a stranger at a bar. how easy it was when hope had hung itself from a noose, when venom flowed through the veins. i spoke into the dawn. and you listened, long after hell closed down and the roads were the only heaven we could know. we walked, we ran, and in some sordid moment of kinship, your hand touched mine. i held on.

the night you first kissed my lips was when i had decided love didn't demand a starving soul, and it sure didn't leave bruises with each touch. it had been months since that first poison dive with you at the shore. there had been more. there would be more. it took moons to unlearn the self-inflicted pain and i knew it would take moons to learn to love again. but with your breath warm against mine, i could have sworn, for a moment, i felt alive. the long-dead embers in the hearth of my hope flickered again: for a moment, just for a moment. and it was the sweet thrill of your eyes and the sour merriment of your smile that made me howl at the sky on a full-mooned night. it had been years of prowling in a cage, believing it to be a vast meadow when you slipped your hand in mine. and now with my hand in yours and our feet in perfect synchrony, to the cacophony of cruelty of a life slowly fading, i dance with you: unafraid, untamed, uncaged.