You were there

Open to interpretation I suppose.

You were there

 

The first time I saw you, you were behind the bookshelf, worn out spine bent, placing away the lives of fictional characters in perfect alphabetical order.

You were close enough for me to smell the book pages on your neck, and see where the color of your skin began to become uneven at the base of your jaw.

I wonder who hurt you.

The tips of your hands look out of place, but they’re so beautiful and yet you treat them like strangers, clumsy and awkward.

I can’t see your eyes but I know that if I could I would see colors.

Am I the only one that can see the way your neck crinkles like candy wrappers, am I the only one that can see the way your hair looks like the sun after you’ve stared at it for far too long, and I the only one that can see the way your mouth is parted slightly, lips so chapped it’s haunting, am I the only one that can see the way the colors of your face blend into a sea of sleep.

Whether the tips of my colors touch yours or if I only imagined them I don’t remember, but I swear your eyes were here and I swear I was blind.

Were my hands artists they would have sculpted you from the ground, taken the dirt and the grime and the wind and formed them into an in-between of you. Were my fingers brushes they would have painted the whites of your eyelashes a thousand times over, the ones dripping from your eyes and the ones I swear I’ve felt brush my skin.

In this instant I think I’ve dreamed of you, as if you were the sun, combing my skin one last time before I breathe out the smoke that cleans us.

And it’s like motions cannot describe the motions I feel with you, that pictures cannot describe the maps of your body. And you just nod your head with the tips of your mouth spreading upwards into oblivion with your neck opened wide just for me and so I trace you like the lines of paper as your skin makes creases against mine.

“would you be angry if I kissed you?” You say it like you would kiss me anyway and I know I should say yes, yes I would be terribly angry because this is like fighting fire with fire but instead what I think comes out is maybe “I don’t think so” and then I don’t think so turns into water against the ship of your lips.

I fall perfectly into you after that I don’t know how but I do, every piece of me, every limb and story all tangled with yours despite the screaming of my ears.

I don’t think it has ever been this quiet.

The feel of you distracts me from it, the way this communication has somehow turned into words, but the shadow of my body cannot protect you enough.

And I think it’s my shadow that breaks you open, head ringing like with the reverb of a bat, reds bright and dull trapped in the gold of your curls.

I miss you. I didn’t used to be this tired; you never used to let me get this tired, why am I so tired?

We would look at each other at half-mast but only because we were awake together whole together tired together and it was okay then because we were colors that didn’t always blend the way an artists mind saw them but we blended together anyway.

I find it harder to forget the smell of passion that used to melt the walls of our apartment, the kind that fucked me into the stained mattress face first like a melody, the kind that brushed me gently like my fingertips used to do against the creams of your back.

I find it harder to forget the lines of your arms, and how they used to mold with mine so perfectly, swaying me into the epitome of the silver scar placed just below your elbow from when worries were unexpected, childish ambitions.

Every time I see you it’s like I still see you because it feels like you never should have left. The warmth of your lips still traces my hairline, the smell of your hazelnut coffee still stains the kitchen, your voice pastel drifts in through the door and my body vibrates as if your hums were tangible.

I’d kiss you for the first time and every time I’d feel you whisper “I don’t think so” against my exhales like you knew me even before you knew me and then you would sigh into me with such fervor it was almost suffocating but I loved you for it anyway.

And you would rush into me, the easiness of your fingers locking into the muscles of my arms that only something like practice can perfect, feet unsteady, clumsy and colorful.

Your laugh would echo into the crook of my neck and I swear it’s still there when I look out for you in the wrinkles of my memories.

You’d turn around and you were like sunshine, like mother f*****g sunshine, how can someone be this bright?

I find it hard to remember such a love because love isn’t really like this is it? Because love is a word and we weren’t anything except the bruising beauty that existed between you and me.

So when I see you now, eyes on fire and the world around you lit up like the walls of our apartment used to be I’m not sure what else to do but hum into you, because words would be too much and mean too little.

We never really existed that way, we never really experienced each other that way, because whenever you touched me it was just to see if I was still there.

So when your fingers instinctively reach out to brush my arm mid-sentence I think my colors touch your again.

Yes, I’m still here.

Reviews

[nostal]

You are no longer there.