Let Sleeping Bears Lie
My bones are on fire.
Pulsating out of my skin and I’m begging them to explode onto your finger tips, because maybe you’ll bleed and maybe that will make me feel better.
Because you taste bitter in my mouth, and I want to spit you out but you’re just getting started and my mouth is pretending to be full.
You keep caressing my ankle, the calloused pad of your finger pressing circles into my skin… your fingerprint a brand so familiar is almost forgets to burn.
Almost, because I’m beginning to choke but I’m minding my teeth as the tears pool and stream down my face.
They always said I looked much prettier when I cried.
And you are almost silent, mouth open and blissful; so unlike those who’ve come before you.
I swallow because I can barely taste it now and your normally tense body lays limp and sated. I try and smile around you, pulling away and whipping away all the evidence of our indiscretions.
You chant my name and it should sound like a prayer but it doesn’t but I can pretend it does. You smile charmingly at me, pressing your lips against mine because you don’t care.
You’ve never cared. Because maybe you have no class, or shame, or morals or tons of other things but I still can’t put my finger on it even after so much time has passed.
Because even as I’m standing next to you now, making polite conversation around you but never to you, I’m thinking of our moments;
Held hands and hesitant kisses pickled with long conversations and the sweetest lies I’ve ever heard.
And it’s hard to imagine that we can’t speak to each other without shoulder shrugs and pursed lips.
Because our fingers still itch to complete the circle and in our most vulnerable states it unravels and reveals. We still can’t breathe in the same air without feeling the pleasure of our masochistic past. It lingers between us, on us… in us.
And even after our bitter… parting? I still miss it, even though I feel like it was for the best, I still crave the closeness and the overwhelming amount of loyalty.
The sting of jealousy still presents itself in the face of your shame but I’ve never conquered you.
But it seems as if you have managed to conquer me, even after I insisted that you cease your efforts, which you had succeeded. I wonder if you will ever know. It’s amusing to me, to see my own decisions still sizzle.
I never regret. Only arch my eyebrow and let my body hum.
We’ve acted on more than a hum, devastating as it was… beautiful as it was.
You tasted bitter but you felt good and we moved together in a language only we understood.
The other day I found your name on my lips and I curled around it like Polaroid’s and camping trips, of all our plans never completed in the tumble of love’s nativity. But just like you, it left a bitter taste in the depth of my molars and I choked like syrup and sap down my throat.
I wonder if you miss me.
I smile in the thought, because I hope you do… in the pleasure of your moans.
“Of course he misses you Emily.”
Do you? Do you miss me like you thought others would?
The way my body looked tucked into covers, sleep seeping into my eyes. Or smiles over coffee and movies and kisses and strokes across arms.
I do have the softest of skin.
And I ponder over whether you still imagine the way your hand looked pressed against it.
I wonder if you meant it all.
I wonder if you still wonder. Because I do, but don’t worry… I can never start loving you again. I’m not near as foolish as I want to be. But I’ll always be in love with you, pooled into it with you. I know I’m not alone in that.
But I’m fond of the loving. I am. Some days I just want someone to call… or rather; I’d like to call you.
Don’t worry… don’t shake or lie.
Because your secret is safe with me.
I know how beautiful you thought I looked, in blue.
Gasping for you, to be given back control and life that I had over you.
So I’ll wear it in memory, like Ilsa in Paris.
And I’ll ask, so inaudible for your ears… is it enough of an apology for you?
