~her soul in division~

This is for all the easy words you missed in Boggle: lots of them end in 's' like you never thought of anything more than what you alone needed. Finite time slipping away until every single singular word was crossed off, to be forgotten until we needed them to argue for the next games points and I'd win with my moons and suns and seas and muses and us. No. Words must be 3 letters. Us is just two, the two of us eyes locked over this plastic game, knowing the third missing letter is hidden in love we don't share. Yes, I know love is 4 letters. But still somehow impossible to find with the naked eye. Searching. And I will lose my moon and sun and sea and muse and u. No. That's not a word. No point. Missing a letter, missing a meaning. This is for when we misunderstood what game we were playing and this is for when we misunderstood how to decide who was winning. This is for when we misunderstood each other and this is for mistakes. This is for when we misunderstood.

I still wish to believe you only let me down in a golden casket and sprinkled roses by the crypt you built. Buried me with a hymn and some holy words, which drip blood thick from my tender mouth the way your name did... I softened every syllable until I never said it again, pretending that was fine. Silent in my mausoleum I can watch it crumble so when asked who killed me, I know the answer is you but my mouth is dirt filled, waiting on the rain to reveal this shallow grave since it won't hide your lies anymore.

I have watched my mother cry. I can see the canyons carved into her face, yet I am unmoved by either the rushing or broken ground. The harder she cries, the faster I run. And so I have decided I must be those tears.

I would have liked a dimming of the sun, an uncanny flicker where it can't burn as oxygen dissipates like words between us. But I'm asking too much, like you said I always did, so I would have taken anything to mark the moment your wild heart became an irritation instead of a beloved nuisance, you burn through everything like new tires on a highway in a fast car. Fanning our flames only made hot ash, stinging our throats with the residual smoke in our bright eyes. I wish there had been anything between us, but mostly a sign screaming STOP, preferably.

I wake with an inhale that seems to suck air out of my lungs. The kind that jackknifes your arms out, reaching for something to steady myself, but they just hit my mattress off beat with my pounding heart. It's dark. Blurry without my glasses, and I have to pull my clock in like I want to kiss it before I can read those green numbers. 3:47. You woke me up. By breathing on my neck from a perch behind me, under a bridge swarming with people, then pressing your lips against the tiny spot below my ear in the moments before the sky explodes with light. I remember. Nightmare darkness swallows me easily and won't let me sleep, I'll fall back into that minute and it's always worse when I wake after, thinking so hard that my hands shake. Was I always dreaming your affection like this?

This is surviving on your own skin, torn from dry lips and edges of fingernails. Swallow your own words, then pound them into the wall just so you can drink the blood off your knuckles later, since you can't have only tears to sate your thirst after chewing on the dead ends of your hair. Finish off the stale air in your lungs by polluting the emptiness with your whispered prayers before you devour yourself whole. This is starving.

God, like... You live off sharp energy? While I am slumber bound, somber wound breaths tightening around me. God. Like, you are lighting fed power. Too alive to touch, pulsing pure electricity through blue blood veins. Sparks. God-like: You haven't slept in years. Ichor burns your heart often, because fire never gets to cry and they made you out of sun.

Somewhere, there is a mermaid wishing for legs. Legs like yours. She'd never have to sing another day with those siren calls to walk on, even with a dimple on your left knee and that scar from your bike still ghosting your right thigh. And sometimes when I'm watching you, crashing onto shore, I become a tributary. I don't lead to you, how could I ever lead to you? You can hold a convincing argument with tears streaming down your face, screaming. The floods threatening me, screaming: Don't you dare tell me I'm weak. I will drown you in this salt water. I can hold my ground and I can hold your head beneath my crushing waves. Screaming, you are a tsunami over me. Around me, screaming. Sirens. Screaming. Sirens. Singing, I'm singing that it's worth it. Landlocked since birth, you are wind sprayed wild in my face and warm sand in between my toes, finishing morning stretches on the beach. The treasures found in tide pools you leave can only be bought with sand dollars, traded like kisses in the evening mist. And I love you, more than I have ever loved anyone before. Including myself. I've taken up oceanography to discover every depth of you. No, I've never seen the coast, but in our bed, an ocean sleeps.