140orFewer

I will wake in the morning

Like so many before:

Cold and alone,

With my sheets on the floor

Remind me to tread carefully.  

The ground around me is unsteady.

When the crags and rocks appear;

I’ll need your breathing at my ear.

All I ever wanted was every single inch of you.  All I ever wanted was to absorb you; to soak in your balm; to breathe you in, as you oxygenate my blood.  All I ever wanted was to have you cover me: to soak into my hands and fill my fingerprints like wax, like dust.  I wanted to wade in you and run my hands gently along your surface, making tiny ripples.  I wanted to watch those ripples fade.  

All I ever wanted was to tug on your hips.  All I ever wanted was to press my incisors into you.  To leave marks.  To leave scars.  All I ever wanted was to never have had you.  All I ever wanted was to want you.

I tasted you all morning, and I’ll spend the afternoon

Lapping at the back of your empty spoon.

Her fingers were so long and slender, like a handful of twigs: angular and thin.  I told her to play the piano: her hands made a fist, her fingers hiding with protest and insecurity. She kept her fingernails short.  She only wore the smallest watches.  Not her decisions.  They had minds of their own: a personality, feelings. They seemed to act on their own accord; her hands, at times, did what they wanted.  She had no say in the matter.  They moved so clumsily.  They must’ve been someone else’s.  It made no fucking sense.  

She would always gesture as she spoke, hands conducting her words, bouncing rhythmically, determining pauses, breaths, and breaks.  Her hands knew what to say before her mouth did.  It was hypnotizing.  You watched her hands and heard every syllable.  I wonder if she knew this.  I wanted to grab them.  Clasp them.   She wouldn’t be able to speak; she’d murmur and moan like a deaf person, whaling cacophonously: words just falling out from her mouth despite the effort of her lips, tongue, and teeth.  She needed those fucking awful hands, those jagged little splinters.  It was so entirely and unsurprisingly confounding to me.

I found her freckles to be maddening.  I was continually compelled to count them, poking each with my index finger like tiny brown buttons; I’ve never made it past eighteen.  It made me clench my jaw.  I wanted to rub them with the heel of my hand, spreading them like tiny droplets of wet paint: small brown flecks everywhere, as if slung from a paintbrush with neither abandon nor precision.  I could have blended them with her skin if I pressed hard enough.  I could’ve done it.  It would have made her skin so lush and chocolatey: coffee diluted with small tufts, clouds of milk gently billowing and blooming.  Like raw, stripped bark.

They were so fucking beautiful and, at once, absolutely confounding.  They were inside of her nostrils and mouth. They ran through the canals of her ears: speckled her brain and dotted her bones. They penetrated every inch of her.  If I were to cut her open, there’d be nothing but freckles.  Millions.  Fucking millions.

I’ve extended my mission statement to include prose (short stories).  And I’m writing again (for now at least).  Hopefully it lasts.  And hopefully you enjoy what I’m writing.

People were hoping the clouds would open up

And hands would pull them by their ankles to the sky;

I thought that would be an awful way to die.

I’ve knelt at your spout:

Wringing my hands in hope for a drop.

And now I sip from your springs

While you beg me to stop.

I’m very sorry to say,

but my creativity comes in waves.