Silhouette Dreams

See, August ate me alive, rolled my softness around it’s tongue but let me keep my bruised peach sweetness. I learned more about the sharpness of want, how daring it is to continue hungering in your silent spaces. My chest bled like an active volcano, but no one needed to know (the things I do just for you). September beckons with your name on its lips and your voice echoes through the teeth of it’s kind smile.

“Today marks six months since you kissed me for the first time, six months of visceral hunger gnawing at my bones with no end in sight. six months of wrists upturned, fervent poetry spilling from bullseye veins, the least amount of sleep I’ve ever gotten. my heart is the most alive it has ever been. even on the days it is speared through like a hunted animal, it beats so red and feverish and proud in your light.”

I DON’T THINK A SINGLE DAY HAS PASSED SINCE YOUR MOUTH TOUCHED MINE THAT I HAVEN’T THOUGHT ABOUT KISSING YOU. YEAH, YEAH, I KNOW, BIG DEAL. BUT HOLY SHIT, I THINK ABOUT TOUCHING YOU SO OFTEN, CERTAINLY YOU CAN FEEL IT TOO. MY BODY IS A CANDLE WICK AND YOU ARE THE AWAKENING OF FLAME BURNING THROUGH ME.

I wear your night sky like a bruise, open my body for you to pour your burning light into. I guess that means I’m made of stars, but also of the fire you store deep in your veins. We’re a spectacle and we know it. I’m all wolf girl, howling for you, moon boy and we’re both afraid of the dark.

“It has become apparent to me that I would crack my chest right down the middle and show you the bright red bird fluttering within my bones that has your name tied around it’s ankle even if it meant exposing my battle cry and bleeding out to the tune of your voice.”

You ask me if all I write are love poems and if I’m being honest, they’re the only way I can call out your name without howling. There’s something less scary about a smoke signal than a wolf. So I guess I’m a love poet and I’m peeling the brave out of the peach of my heart just to give you a little something sweet.

How far do I have to split my heart open for you to see the red running in your direction? I’d crack my chest right down the middle just so you could see the butterfly garden in my lungs. I’d car crash my body into yours just to feel how hard love can punch, even if it loosens my jaw, makes me tell you things I would normally be too afraid to say. I want to risk it, make you my emergency contact, just for a little more time with your hands. I want you to touch me until I’m made brave and we can settle between the before and the after of you.

Truth is, I want your mouth against my neck and your body sighing against mine. Truth is, I want our hearts to tandem skydive. You bring out the daredevil in me, a wolf that never knew what it craved until it first saw the moonlight in your bones.

Here is my heart and yes, it eats out of the palm of your hand no matter what you feed it and it is not only in dreams that I bring it to you gasping and red like an offering.

there’s something about your touch that flips me inside out, something about your mouth that makes the angel on my shoulder turn into a red hot sinner.

I never once believed you were made of anything sharp, you know, your bones are just the tool they use to sharpen the knives, but you are wrapped in caution tape. I want to be your soft shelled prayer, that source of light you can see from miles away, even on nights when the moon is hiding and you can’t count your fingers in front of your face. I will glow in the dark for you. I can be your eyes when your heart feels blind, the sky is big enough for both of us. I tell all of my friends I want to keep you safe, wrap you in the blanket of my body so only warmth gets in. I know you’re scared and darling, I’m scared too, but there’s beauty in the belly of our poem and we’re living in it.

I want to pull the heaven from my spine and heal everything that hurts you.