To know something singular in yourself is amazing, nothing gets in the way. No sentence forever failing because it can’t match. It is painful truth with a runner’s pulse, a touch that’s down and there you are with a woman-all-legs.
You say yes to her after the initial hello—she speaks and the want is forever need. You in her kitchen with a third, fourth glass, finding something opening. There is fever, rage that you’ve been closed, and now you’re coming back to life after being asleep on it.
(Everything is in a hurry, in retreat—this will not last long. The habit requires you to flee before she reaches, take bits of the self you can carry. You marched, you marched and oh, you marched. She sees you running and grabs your hand, tells you, Put it down; let it go. You become possessive.)
You’re thirsty and any old tap won’t do. It becomes a joke about how you U-Haul. You and her till dying, and when seasons come and go, days link to scents, her cycles, and you learn no tomatoes, extra mayo, always on white. You fall asleep breathing together— you know when balance has changed, notice different chimes in her laugh, the late-night draft through your window, soon you get cold. She’s not caring she’s taking too much cover.
All you know of yourself is that tick, measuring the length of her absence. What you take, no more, because what you built was not known to shake and crumble, divide halfway without you knowing who’s getting your half.
Sips turn into confidence, you need to ask. She is holy in her lies and the grapevine frequents your shoulder to say, You’re being treated a fool.
(What is the point to opening and opening you betray the home inside of you? Expose its rooms and its clutter, dust, the child with your face, peeling at her lips to get to the tender part of a kiss. Opening the wind so it leaves its sand and salt to glitter scars, until you see there are pearls to give you worth—opening and opening to abandon even yourself?)
You are in prairies of hurt, bold and cageless, when bullets make a space for two more stars, and a headline of how you took her first then followed.