I am searching endlessly. I am looking for love in full submission to loneliness. I am using a paintbrush shaped like your bottom lip; I dip into the candy paint, create a mural of momentum into moving on, moving in, moving according to your whims. You, you you you, stand in the corner and wave. Sea salt waves crash into me, marrying your caramel words that drip out of your mouth. I think kissing you would be like dipping my fingers into a fountain of fondue: messy, sweet, and all-encompassing. I am fighting my every primal instinct. I burn it all down- shake my hair out of my face and re-apply a chilly, stinging lip gloss. They’re sticky, sickly, I need to be medicated, and you’re a pharmacy. But instead I fled. I drive past empty windows and Christmas tree adorned homes. I bite back the image of what a refrigerator-lit kitchen would look like with you. Instead I count the red lights and ignore the pit in my throat. I eventually sink into my plush couch and hide beneath a blanket. I bury myself into a book and try not to remember how it felt when your hand was on my back. I keep seeing your name between every line, the curve of your back in the spine, the calloused hands I crave on the paper. I sigh but every breath feels like it should be right into you- in between your lips and reciprocated in a way that the devil himself can’t witness. The electric touch that could melt the iciest of frosty February mornings. The eye contact that would make the earliest morning moon become a blushing sunrise. The sun is, instead, setting on my dizzy daydream. So I give in, submit to the greyscale glow, and wait.
I once found myself absorbed in a dizzy daydream about you, so sickeningly sweet and salacious it prompted an essay. One of many. You think I’m dramatic, or possibly profoundly problematically poetic. Bonus points for alliteration. You’re still my most beautiful muse. I digress.
I once wrote of the curve of your lips, the crashing of your wave from across a busy restaurant. I described what I thought kissing you would taste like as the tender taste of a fingertip in chocolate fondue. The mess. The drama. But most importantly, the sweetness- the kind that wraps itself into your mouth and makes you sick immediately but you beg for forgiveness from your insides because you’ll try it again in a few minutes. Or seconds. Now. Now. Now. The sickly sweet serenity that is worth the longest sugar crash. I begged for a peace (or a piece, depending how you decide to interpret that feeling) that would come and go. I evaporated into a frosty December and became one with the snow. I left my agony behind and buried it under a pile of dirty laundry. I added anger, and then sobriety, and then detrimental grief. I took down my Christmas lights, planted tomatoes, and forgot about everything regarding you. My books became books with no allusion to your existence. I accepted the things I could not change (a major sugar crash) and changed the things I could (everything about the me that you knew).
And then you called.
And I answered on the second ring.
God I’m so sick of missing you.
Don’t let me skip the nitty gritty.
I listen to your laugh bouncing between my ears and I bury the truth beneath it. I am back where I started, rotten on the inside from months of depravity. Your hand on my back, a muffled excuse me or behind you as you race by. Time stood still, you never did. I dream relentlessly of those times.
