#inkstainedstar

ii. he finds you in an overflowing bathtub - head between your knees, nails carving bloody moons into your skin; later you tell him yes, sometimes shower water against porcelain sounds like gunshots raining on your skin. 

iii.  your name is a whispered prayer that spills from his mouth and he repeats it over and over like a mantra; he breathes words you recognise from a dream and they condense in the frosty air between his lips and yours.

iv. he tells you that your bruises look like galaxies and holds you like the world has cheated him of you for far too long. tonight, you run out of names before he runs out of kisses.

v. hazy-gold sunlight sieves through the moth-eaten curtains and frames his face and you can’t stop holding his cheeks in your palms because he is here, he is here, he is here, and you’ve long grown tired of wondering why he hasn’t left yet.

(it’s funny, though-you don’t remember ever being to the beach before. then again, you don’t remember anything.)

ii. your mouth tastes like rust and your knuckles burn. the words ring in your ears like the shrill screech of metal against metal, carving into the air, carving into your skin. you turn and you run and you only stumble once. the air smells like asphalt and choked screams.  

iii. soft rays of light hit the surface of the water and pool in green where there should be gold, but it feels more right than it has ever been in a long time.

iv. a name spills from his lips and latches onto your ribs. you are standing there and you are looking at him but you also see a boy, slumped in a back alley with blood-stained teeth and bruises in full bloom; and charcoal-stained fingers tapping against the windowsill back in a room in a home in a place in a memory that feels so far away you think it’s a dream; and a smile like the brooklyn sunrise except it was for you; and a boy, this boy: with sun-streaked hair and oceans for eyes.

v. you remember him. you remember, you remember, you remember, and now it feels like maybe you never forgot.