See, this is where I falter. I so never wanted to think of you as an unkind person, but I’ve fallen out of my lightness and haze and my inordinate heart is caught in a perpetual drop. Still, I trivialise my own distress and in your own time allow you to do so too. You told me you valued unwavering honesty and so I thought of you as just like me, but then you proceeded to blow your smoke into my lungs and so I spluttered through my feelings for you. I am lowering myself, see, and I am falling alongside your ash. Both disgusting and discarded I guess you could say, only, I was sleepy and smelled like lavender and tasted infinitely better, you have to admit. You did not let me down as easily as this so much as you abruptly unhinged my fingers, white at the knuckles, from the ledge. And I had already been teetering. Still, I suppose inanimate intimacy was a more appealing choice when the prospect of me sounded off key and you were afraid. But, maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe I’m just tired of seeing all of the people I have loved exist so easily far above me, and I am so sickened by the head rush. After some time it seemed like the blood which had been spiralling in circles around my body at high velocity only ran hot for you while you pressed between my legs, but, see, you didn’t even want to fuck. So, again, this is where I falter. I could have sworn I smelled it on your breath, but at the same time you were far too sweet. I might have even mistaken your shaking and whimpers for bliss over fear of me, as if that wasn’t what you had intended by your firm plans and planted hands on my body, head tilted back. I wanted you to invade me so completely you’d have filled even the ridges in my fingerprints, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t want it again, too. But, see, I too was terrified and unlike you those moans could not lie. You wrapped yourself around me like smoke and your hands around my throat. You told me I was dangerous to your health but you were happy about it, and now I am excusing myself for getting it all wrong. Still, cigarettes are twice a risk, less complex and completely unable to move underneath you as deliciously as I could, wouldn’t you say. I still don’t think of you as an unkind person, but after pitching myself down for and to you over a number of months I have crashed and cracked myself onto the concrete in a mess of blood and bones and rawness, a physical embodiment of my own shortcomings laid out like the artsy pictures you take of the things you like to play. See, in your silence I have had some time to think about it, and maybe I would apologise for loving you in such a disgusting way but I think this time is yours. Your scent has changed, you know, and maybe if I paid more attention I would have noted it then, but I was too focused on tripping over the static electricity on your lips.  Maybe I am just bitter, and I say this like it is a fact. It could be that the infinite drop has me too dizzy to coordinate the obscurity that was us, and this is something to consider as I rotate myself mid air for a better view of your perfect hands and think about fucking to your favourite songs. You edged ever closer to losing your footing, if you were not aware, but you were too busy recovering from the withdrawals of inhaling somebody else to notice the full potential of the plunge. Maybe if I were smaller, more fine tuned and less blue with a clearer sound, hourglass figure and tighter strings tethering me to the edge, I like to think I could have fallen into instead of over you. But, see, this is where I faltered.

Whispered illiteracy