River Run Red
Even when I’m not missing you.
I still am.
I’m a liar, because I’m on fire for something that tastes exactly like your skin. And what do I do, but starve like a thousand lonely hearts for your voice- light and new. It’s our desire that drowns us, leaves us cold and wet; heaving on the shore with tiny gasps and memories of life. We are a million different thankyous that have died on soft lips. Breathe life into me, because now that you’re breathing just for one, I figure your lungs are feeling awful empty with your shallow exchanges. I want to help you breathe deeper and love the life you’ve given- not what life you’re giving away.
I’ll sing in your car again, even though you scoff because my voice lights you up from the inside. Then you’d never die. But without me, I fear you’ll loose your life.
Or maybe it’s mine.
You’re the only person who still lingers in the regret section of my heart.
I wish things could have been timed better, or rather; that we would have made the time rather then waiting for the time to find us. I wish I could have known that you would still press on my heart like a thousand paper weights waiting to be lifted, waiting for me to realize what was in my grasp. I wish your lips didn’t taste as wonderfully as they did, or maybe I wish that I had never had to the pleasure of recording the sensation of your lips to my memory; every texture and pressure, every taste and movement, every feeling and juxtaposition that defined you and the weight of your body pressed on top of mine.
But I think most of all, I wish that the words that come from you didn’t pierce me so effectively, because it’s a thirsty Thursday with laughter and opportunity all around me but all I can think about is your voice and your hands and your lips and your face; when I can almost be certain that your thoughts are not focused on me.
My chest feels uncomfortable and tight, as if someone has vacuumed out all the air and all my organs; to look at my spleen.
Is it as purple as you imagined it would be when I first spoke it to your lips?
Did you know I’d been holding out for you; twisting my fingers and ignoring the jealousy, green and spindly, growing around my optic nerve. My mind aches for you, replay button seems to be stuck. It asks why I didn’t push harder, want louder and clutch faster...?
I have no answer. I open my eyes to get an image other than that of you to reprint beneath my lids.
Maybe it’s the chocolate and maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s the altitude and the pull in my lungs. So when you leave me for her- with her, with her blue eyes and her talented laugh. I will do my best to smile with pleasantries; yes, we all know me. Polite and loud; beautiful not but charmingly not boring. I don’t have a freckle to connect. No, I’m just skin and ink.
Skin and ink…
Silent thighs and quiet fingers,
And ink.
