Work Text:
Sky today: frozen. Latticed with contrails like ice bridges, pressing white plaid into the atmosphere.
The roof was sweating coldly into our backs, into our clothes. We bathed under the clabber sun, faces opened like morning glories to taste the light, prickling with the contrast of the still sleeping shingles against the sky breaking open like eggshells.
You slipped your hand into mine. It’s dry, hard, crisp with callouses. I don’t know. Maybe you were just cold.
--
I built a crush on you from the ground up, like a snowman, just because I was bored. I wanted everything to be worse. I wanted to smash my old records, limbo under lower and lower bars of morality. I wanted to ruin the last good thing in my life. I wanted to break my last tie.
I underestimated how much you could love. I’ll have to try again.
--
Sky today: mackerel. Sheets of cold oatmeal clouds slashed open to bleed cartoon blue.
You follow me on my tour of the city, trying to find an opportunity to martyr myself, your steps the Minute Waltz, mine the Piano Sonata No. 2, perforated with the little trills of my skipping forward to meet your pace. It’s my project, but I’m chasing your vestige around corners, down alleys, threading between parked cars and over crosswalks. It takes me a full second to fill my lungs with the listless winter air, and another to empty them. It seems like you only breathe when you feel like it. Your cheeks are ruddy, giving a background to the soft, white hair of your cheeks. My insides are crackling with freezer burn.
In a labyrinth of gutters, brick walls, abandoned scaffoldings, I find your skin. You’re cold, colder than the air around us. I chafe your hands between mine, chuff humidity to your fingertips. I deface your sanctity by pressing your palms to my thick waist, where my perennial winter weight insulates me. I can offer so little, but I’ll feed you until I’m empty.
--
Sky today: flat. Unglazed dollar store ceramic beige.
We’ve been driven inside by the syringe stabs of cold. The others—I don’t know. I don’t care. We plait our toes, I press the ball of my heel to the cup of your sole, we bristle the hair on our ankles. Where you fade and your body begins, I can touch. That’s the rule for today.
If you could hate me, if you could rebuke me, debase me, hurt me, shove me away—if you could descry the awful, teratoid me lurking chthonic under the human shape I, through some sleight of heart, have tricked you to love, that would be…exquisite.
A single harp string is held taut from my neck to my ankles, untouched, pulling me closed. You could cut it. You could flay me open. It would be such a relief.
You rest your hand on my stomach, sighing happily, sleepily.
--
Sky today: swollen. Torpid. Overfilled bathtub gone tepid.
--
Sky today: falling.
I’ve got a limpid ache pushing against the hug of my ribs. Today I hate you. Your hands chase me across the floor, but I slither away. I’ve got sewage stewing in my diaphragm, acerbic, sloughing off the lining of my lungs, and your fingers are miming a natty hike up my calf.
This is fun. These new methods of self-flagellation. It’s nice to have something new to do.
I sidewind free of your little finger-kiss caresses. The look on your face cuts me so cleanly, I could sing.
--
Sky today: gone. Sucked back into space.
Searing under the moonlight, we lay on the roof, supine like something in a butcher’s display case.
My least favorite thing about you is that you like me. It’s a disgusting habit. You’re supposed to be better than that. When your hand, once more, curls around mine, my guts boil. I think I’d like you better if you were dead.
You gape your mouth. I blow a stream of cigarette exhaust into you, and you cage it in your teeth. Now you’re dirty inside, too.
You’re not following my plan. You’re throwing me off. I still love you.
--
Sky today: who cares.
I’m still here. I’m still tethered. I wanted to be on my way weeks ago.
You let me cry on you. It’s an act of war.
I’ll ruin us. I promise you that.
--
What do you want? What are you trying to do to me? It’s working, whatever it is. I hate it. It’s too hard, wanting to live. It’s too much work.
It would be so easy to follow you through Hell. I would love to suffer for you, suffer over you. I would do anything to die for you.
But your mouth finding my ear in the dark, scraping out a sodden whisper, maybe hoping I was asleep, maybe just trying to absolve yourself of the weight of your secret...nobody could fight that.
I underestimated you again and again. You were the one orchestrating everything all along, weren’t you?
I’m not strong enough. I don’t hate enough. I’m out of fuel. I’m so tired. My mouth finds yours.