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I was a fingerbreadths from love. Then I got lost in the snow.
Love me from a distance or not at all, love me through the window, love through the locked door, love me from across the country, over state lines and timezones- love me three hours ahead.
There's only so much love I can take before I start to be seen. We can only get so close before we start to merge into one creature- grotesque with desire, our exposed and fractured rib cageholding a single rotting heart
It’s cold out here, is what I mean. It’s freezing, the hum drum dullness, rain on a roof and the rumble of trains, sensation and sound and- skin, split open you can see is just another organ. The clouds roll in. It’s looking like another storm, but then you press knife to chest and heart bursts out- here is my devotion, staining your sleeve.
Love is a disease, it’s a contagion. It lines my lungs in with mold- touch me and feel your fingers sink into my skin, soft with decomposition. Love me too much and with too many hands and I'll swallow you whole. I don't want you to see the gaping maw inside of me, the emptiness behind my skin, all decay black and thin blood, I’d rather let you think I was clean and not hemorrhaging devotion. I’d rather you not see the bloodstains.
You were never supposed to stay, is what I mean. The archeologists who find us won’t be able to see us as anything but one strange creature- bones intertwined and preserved tissues melted together. I suppose with contagions there is little to do other than burn. The thing with burning is that it purges the parasite, sure, but where does that leave you and me? Dust and ash and begging for it to stop? It might be better with this: me curled up a few steps from the porch and you inside. Me, freezing from tongue to teeth to lips curled in the shape of your name. You, asleep in bed, finding me in the morning when everything that needed to be said has already been spoken out loud.
There’s a hollowness at the center of me with room for two. I’ll keep the door locked and let you believe I'm whole enough to love, but in thousands of years when my bones are exhumed they’ll see that love is an infection that consumed me down to the marrow.
I’ve heard heaven is cold to the touch, is what I mean. I’ve heard it’s always snowing and the angels are all made by children and the fingers are always blue. I’ve heard it's cold.
You wake up three hours before me and I’ve been dreaming of you the whole time, your blurry face an echo across the long stretch of land. Your name hitch-hiked thousands of miles to crawl into my mouth and rest heavy and bitter and burning on my tongue like stomach acid- if we’re not careful it’ll kill us both. I dream of you and swallow down the poison of longing and do not rest easy.
You built me a home with no windows, is what I mean. Build me a city too, call it holy land, hallowed land, church cemeteries house enough corpses that I can’t be lonely anymore. I’m tired, is what I mean. There’s food on the table but it’s rotten. There’s knives in the kitchen but they’re dull. I’ll love you forever, I mean. But I won’t get close enough to touch.