RIDE OR DIE

first. he touches you and you light on fire. your wrist blazes where his fingers meet your skin. the burns don’t show, but it’s hard to breathe with ash in your lungs. it’s so hard to breathe. you’re suffocating daily. second. it hurts to watch him. he shines. he’s brighter than the sun, he’s too beautiful for your eyes. it’s hard to look at him. it’s even harder to look away from him. you’re going blind. third. your ears are tuned to his voice. you could pick him out in a sea of thousands. his voice makes pretty singers who sing pretty songs sound dull. his voice makes everything else sound ugly. fourth. the color of his eyes is enough to drown in. he is turning you into a clichéd love-wrecked being. you’re drowning, always sinking. down, down, down. fifth. you know him. you love him. through a thousand lifetimes, across millions of stars, you’d find him, you’d never leave him. you love him, till death do you part. ( sixth. he loves you, too. )

I feel like I’m living in this constant state of too much and not enough, Like the days are passing by too fast and too slow, And I’m always either overwhelmed or empty.

you’re about to kiss him for the first time and you’re in his bed. your bodies parenthesis, a bare half inch between your bellies. your heart is trying to free itself from your body through your mouth.  “wait,” he says. “put these on.”  a stethoscope. “trying to play doctor?”  his teeth flash like knives when he laughs.  “no,” he says. “i want you to hear it.”  his hand winds over yours, fits the chest piece between his ribs. and right there in his childhood bedroom, the light on his head like a halo: his heart floods in like skipping stones on a summer evening when you believed in magic for the first time. when you kiss him it’s a god damn miracle, it destroys the world. whole cities run out of electricity. nothing exists but your bodies, this bed, and his face blooming lavender sunset. you kiss so long the stars come out to watch. you kiss so long the moon is jealous. and all the while, you think: so this is what it feels like to become immortal. this is what it sounds like when someone gives their heart to you.

His hands shake something furious, and you don’t know how to stop them, don’t know if they belong to a killer or a lover, or if there’s even a difference anymore. His shadow dances with yours in the streetlights; your darkness has found a kindred spirit, but you are still trying to take the fear from his mouth. Demons and angels are at war inside of him, and you swear to love every single one, swear to love him wicked, swear to love him holy. He is licking prayers he stopped believing into your mouth; if you thought kissing him would save him, you were dead wrong.