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Someone asked me to describe home,
Alexander Hamilton once had a home. Alexander once had a home in another’s arms. He once had a home on the right side of a cot in an icy cabin amidst a war. He once had a home with his lover’s soft breath on the back of his neck, careful wrists around his stomach and many discreet touches. For four years of time, Alexander Hamilton had a home in a man with a three syllable name and a fire branded into his spirit. In a way, he wished he could forget the months of suffering he’d endured at Valley Forge. A playful youth, wisps of auburn red hair curling out from beneath his braid, his lover threading their gentle fingers through the strands and soothing his aching soul.
As a child, he concluded that his home was with his family. His father left, his mother passed and that glowing light seeping from the end of a narrow tunnel grew brighter--beckoning him, even as he was separated from his older brother. Alexander Hamilton not once had a home. Not even Eliza’s comforting arms around his shoulders or her sugary sweet voice in his ear begging him to bed. For that moment, those arms were his and he’d lean his head back to capture the taste of his cracked and dying lips to repay for not giving him a last. But they were never his. Instead Eliza’s creamy pressures took his place. Eliza was a goddess wrapped daintily in a mortal's body while his past beau was the earth holding down his feet in iron fists. But Eliza was only fluttering in his cage and every petty little thing led back to his man.
In the spaces of his brain he recollected when her hands slid across his shoulders--taking the place of his touches and his silent glances. Eliza was not him; Eliza would never be him. Her large, dark doe eyes glancing up at him as if he guarded the world in his palm with reliance, her gaze could never restore his. His were so glittering, his were in a way so pure. When Alexander studied tides that reverberated around the harbor, in those crashing waves of marine and silver Alexander saw his scrutiny. He was forced to stumble away as tears began to brim the rims of his lids. There was naught Alexander craved more in the whole world to have to peer up into his lovers visage because they were much taller than he was; he dreamed of calloused hands across the rip of his chest and yearned for the thrill of indecency. More than twice Alexander would slap a hand across his infatuates mouth, teasing a finger of silence across the line of his lips. Because Eliza was so sweet, and there was not anything of deprivation, desire or lust in their relationship.
It was the idea that Alexander needed him, and they demanded him too. There was not one being in the galaxy that had made Alexander so complete in his benevolence and the caverns of his soul. These expressions were replaced when his lover caught his wrist every night and twisted him up into a wrenching kiss. There was never any alcohol brewing on either tongues or disgust written in between the cracks. The tips of Alexander’s fingers turning frost bitten next to the fading fire, his lover’s warm breath cupping his appendages and padding his fingertips across the wrapping cravat of his neck, untying it and tossing it aside before digging into the dip of his breeches. Heavy breathing and for the second--they weren’t so cold anymore. They could forget about the blood underneath their fingertips, they could obliterate the growls in the pit of their stomach, they could consign to oblivion anything but each other.
Because for four years, Alexander Hamilton found home in a man named John Laurens.
But, John Laurens was gone.
And Alexander, was still here.
And I started talking about your hair color
It was like cinnamon. It was John’s and John’s only. Lots of people had muddy hair, but nobody had hair like John. John Laurens had hair that Alexander lay and twisted his fingers in it all night. Threading and ringleting again the tufts into to separate organizations and paths. The immigrant could never sleep, too involved in beaming at the way that John’s chest hovered every few seconds before lowering and steadily inhaling in again. A perfect circle of life occurring right before his sight. Alexander chose to not fall asleep. In the chance that he was too exhausted and was forced to shut his eyes he'd always awake up with screams reverberating out of his throat. John would pin his shoulder down and force him awake as he flailed about wildly throwing fists, punches to the air. He’d sob resonantly, tears glistening his eyes and trailing silhouettes down his cheeks. John wouldn’t say a word in these episodes, he'd instead wrap his arms across his torso, humming comfortingly in his ear till he had fallen asleep again. Alexander ripped on his hair, a vigorous detail and marking embrace. In the morning they’d both wake, and when John winced while slipping his uniform over his arms, Alexander noticed the scratch marks he’d made in his frenzy.
Maybe there was the perfect almost mesmerizing way that his hair strung in front of his eyes. Like a thicket of vines and ivy pines. It was tucked behind the shell of his ears, classic as a required braid twisted down his spine. At the end of the day, Alexander tugged the crimson ribbon from John’s hair, hypnotized by the way it cascaded down his spine and flattened against his collarbone. When his shirt was slung to the ground, Alexander tamely pressed his fingertips against the line of lavender bruises crescendoing across his neck like a string of amethyst pearls. Not ever a hair out of place, they wavered in the wind, catching and flowing down his posterior majestically. For John didn’t mind when Alexander caressed his bloody fingers through his scalp or used his cracked nails to brush the flowing shower. Alexander would narrow his focus through the somber of his New York bedroom, vigilant and with guided hope in his chest in the times that he would find Eliza fast asleep at his right side. For a short glimmer in a moment he believed that it was John. But John’s hair wasn’t so shadowed, and Eliza’s didn’t gleam in the candlelight like John’s did. It was then he’d realize,
My love, you're gone, and I am still here.
And the sound of your voice
John’s voice was a metaphor. Honey melting and stirring into a temperate cup of tea. His voice was a waterfall, flowing into his ears. Miracles only happen in fairy tales, to Alexander the boy was a fairy tale written perfectly for himself. A miracle just within his grasp. On the dusks he’d spring awake from his nightmares, water clouding his lungs from the hurricane or John’s fallen body in his arms, he’d rise to John’s biceps around his waist, his head curled flawlessly into the crook shape of his neck. His lover’s pleasant hum echoing in the worn column of his throat. The notes of their song met together like such stainless, melodic harmonies. John’s voice was Alexander’s song.
He’d never forget John’s rugged stubble on the arch of his jaw or the calmly gasp spat on his cheek. Alexander always reminisced what they spoke of on those bitter, winter nights with frost slicking the windows. Alexander simply listened to the tone of his speech and in turn listened to his lover listening to him. It was the sound of that harmony that didn't dive straight to his core, it stuffed his lungs and dragged him down to drown. John’s vocals caused him to float while the pearling sea of navy swirls were captured beneath his feet. His voice made him soar, piercing through the sky, all of his senses heightened high while grating at his skin. For every little word that scraped at him like sin was liquor on his tongue from a bottle coming within. The only music Alexander willed to hear was John’s in his ear each night, whispering how much he loved him. For Alexander, every rhyme looks alike but does not sound the same; every, “hello” that he spoke choraled like, “Come here”. Intimacy coloring their lyrics and stole all of his words. Alexander would string those syllables in the heavens or at least tack them to his ceiling.
They deserved that.
And the taste of your lips
Oh, and he tasted like melted gold. When Alexander tasted his lips collided stars bursted within his cranium allowing him to see all the tinctures he’d never before believed true. John was not just one shade of rain, he was every last one. Their consolidation was like liquor and the separation an after wash of burning, rough rum resting on his tongue. The needy sensation of craving the relish John Laurens’s rough, flaking lips on his own. In the cracks of his skin, Alexander could chew at the blood and the biting. He’d catch John teething at the inner flesh of his cheek in a irritable bought. His soldier would trace his touch across the tip of Alexander’s nails in contrast to own terrifying habits.
“Now, what made you bite them this time, Alex?"
He’d never answer and chose simply falling in love with the way their hands felt intertwined together. When the lost one tasted his lips he realized how much he’d been starving these decades. Deprivation wavered in the pitting catacomb of his abdomen. He got John’s appetite in his jaw and Alexander dismissed that he was starving or that the moldy bread he’d ingested the day before simply hadn’t been enough. John satisfied his lust, John fed his soul. John tasted like satisfaction pressed into a wine and it passed his lips each evening--he was impossible to resist. Alexander was recently to the passion of their colors shining bright, he sensed the panic hidden beneath his eyes, he lapped at the lust as it was written as idols in the sky. It was magical regarding John's abilities to put his anxieties to rest. In the flickering flame of the candle translucent in the night, he dove into his eyes, starved all of his fears and tasted all the dreams he kept coiled beneath his bones.
Because after just one taste of his love, Alexander realized that he had been deprived his entire life.
how your eyes seem on my back
There was not just one location. Alexander Hamilton found references and subtle innuendos to everything John Laurens without even searching. John’s were a brilliant teal, inside he found ice from snowy mountains and elevations so steep; he saw castles building in the sky, sloshing sea waves crashing and rolling into gentle, tender tides. Every hue of indigo he witnessed was John Laurens’s eyes and every sunset in the heavens was flame to the fire of his regret.
He should of stayed and fought, instead of cowered away in fright.
He should've been by his side when he died.
He should've made sure that the last things those beautiful blue eyes saw were his own gleaming down in resurrection.
He should of touched a soft hand to his lover's cheek, bent to kiss the tears off of his cheeks and his fluttering eyelids.
But he did not; Alexander Hamilton would never know the last thing that John Laurens’s eyes ever saw.
What was the last thing his wandered brain thought as he riveted up at the sky?
He was desperate to justify John Laurens’s eyes, and yet, to reveal his eyes one must resolve the man himself. Because hidden behind his eyes, there was a man. A man more than his physical capabilities. To Alexander, John Laurens was more than just a man. Alexander constructed words for him when he had none and John discovered colors where Alexander’s eyes blinded him. In the waves tossing in his optics, Alexander slipped beneath the waves and was perished.
Could I never be found?
Alexander died the day that John Laurens passed; he was still stuck in John’s eyes--those were shut fast. His beautiful gaze tended a break from the wondrous sight of love. He marched into his eyes and saw starry moonless nights knowing in his soul that he was home. His eyes weren't just blue, Alexander had studied them--sometimes they chuckled, and sometimes they cried, but they always had power to console what was right. He saw every hue of life, a hint of his own demise. Because everything would kill him, cigars on a smoking night, or alcohol sipping dew--they’ll all kill him in the end. Alexander always chose the boy with the blue eyes, and together their spirits both died. Alexander didn’t need a milky sky on a sunny day- John Lauren’s eyes were all the heavens necessary. At the end of the day, it never mattered because the sea and the sky both envied his eyes. Generous as he was, John would give one eye to the sea and another to the sky to make Alexander’s world more beautiful to live.
Alexander sometimes regretted falling for the boy with the baby blue eyes.
Only because he worried one day he’d forget what it felt like to breathe underwater.
And how your skin feels like
The smooth skin of John’s back were a marble track that Alexander’s fingers danced upon. There were no creases or wrinkles on his skin, no messy freckles dotting the surface. His body was transparent except for the symmetrical scars on both of his forearms and shoulder--one two inches above his heart. Sometimes the immigrant would turn over on the cot, and John would kiss his shoulder blades. For that split second until the lips left him, the weight of the world had been lifted. He’d trace a line connecting the two scars into a life line of fate. It had snapped when they was shot three times. Alexander was told he was found on his back, his pupils glaring straight up the silver lining in the clouds--that’s where he was now. Could I fly there? Alexander always envisioned their bare forms touching again in front of a fire on the cool stone base. A place where he’d follow more lines from his fingertips to collect three more bullet scars in his nails.
But Alexander never saw John Laurens again. How could he collect his scars when there was no where to gather them from?
John traced poetry in the freckles scattered across his nose, he not once read them out and somehow Alexander knew what they were all about. He laid his head on top of his chest and listened to the ocean tossing between his ribs like a tiny child with a sea shell to their ear. If Alexander recognized his younger self on a desolate island in the Caribbean would he warn him about the boy with ocean eyes and marble skin? Or would even that not be able to rip himself from loving something to true. Because poetry was when his perception ceased thought and just felt. Alexander longed to learn the lyrics of his life, memorize each line so he could sing the most handsome song with both of their hearts entwined. There was inferno they both kindled that sifted until half the fire revolved to smoke and Alexander got burned. His skin charred and flaking, maybe he’d blow away into the wind.
With John Laurens, Alexander danced beneath the stars and was drunk in the moonlight. He’d trace his fingertips along the curves waxing and waning across his chest, places where their ribs and collarbones collide. With John, he always found the north star in the man of marble stardust skin.
Until I realized
For four years, Alexander Hamilton had a home. He had a place, he had a purpose and he had a castle they had both built from their raw palms. Alexander found his home in a man named John Laurens. Only when he met him did he realize that his sanctuary was setting course for disaster. In his haven, there was a man with honey colored hair, voice like a metaphor, and who tasted of sweet wine; his eyes were like a sea of stars and his curves molded of marble. John always told him he was a boy with glistening sand skin. Some may say Alexander never found a home, for perhaps he only found love; because you cannot make homes out of humans, life isn’t a fire to keep you warm, arms are not walls to protect you.
Lies, Alexander Hamilton will whisper proud and true. Because in a body beneath the soil, you’ll find Alexander Hamilton’s soul wrapped in a gorgeous satin ribbon in the space where a man's modest eyes once lived. How could he not have a shelter when he was buried with him? A heart of gold stopped beating, two glistening eyes were laid to rest, god broke his heart to prove that he only takes the best.
Alexander Hamilton once had a home tangled in the knot of another.
His home was with the boy with blue eyes.
They had expected to hear a place.