Sometimes, at night, when I wake up with your scent tangled in my hair, I remember the feel of your sandpaper skin, the warmth of your breath on the back of my neck and your sleeping sighs. I roll over the possibility of waking up beside you. I crush the notion of falling asleep in your arms. Oh, not this again. Darling, no.

The sun is rising on the eastern horizon, but I can still see the stars. I can still see the map of your worried features. I can still see your hand on the doorknob. I can still feel the panic rising.

I turn to the wall. This pressure is a birdcage I’ve trapped myself in.

There are records on the walls that no one will hear. Hold tight to the notion that, once, you were loved; that, once, someone listened to your song.

I want to write you sad, sick love songs.

Carve your name out on my bones.

Cut my hair and sleep in the ocean’s bed by day.

Count the stars by night;

Tiptoeing on train tracks, wondering where you are.

I’ll douse my skin with wild lilies.

Perhaps you’ll crave me more.

One day, you will.

And my sad, sick love songs will bring you home.

Her body is passion. On the dancefloor.

Places like this where a kiss is not a promise,

Where two bodies melt into one,

Where one movement of her hips is heaven.

Here are our sacred virginal vows.

Here are our devout cries to God.

Here we confess to it all, teeth bared.

Here we are God’s children.

Our sins are beads of sweat that collect in the strands of her hair.

As her body writhes like a Devil snake,

She prays and prays and prays.

And she found herself the witch,
Poison apple in hand,
Killing her jealousy.

Warm bodies pressed up close. Love in pauses, in waiting. Love in three seconds of mingled breath. Her fingers dancing on his cheek, his head on her chest rising and falling with her breaths.

But time will tell.

Her embrace is a lingering exaggeration. A long-limbed, awkward embrace. An incomplete kiss.

Listen to how still the air is now.

His knowing. Her knowing. And each to their own.

Her fingers freeze as she reaches towards his hand. The harsh frost envelopes her arm, traveling up to her lips, down to her ankles. Icicles form at her elbows and wrists. There is snow in her veins, slowly being pumped through ventricles in her heart.

And while she stills in her frosty state, he kisses her chilled cheek and leaves her.

The beat of her heart is slow and steady, but the snow has begun to clog the arteries, has begun to flood her lungs, to dam her nerves.

Spring will come, as it always does. But time will tell if her bones will thaw, if she will move again with raw melting muscles, if she won't be able to see her own breath every time she sighs.

Take her toes.
Fragments of her frozen skin.
Her heart as it slows in your palm,
As the dark blood drips down your wrist,
As it seeps into the clothes you wear.