You hold on to love—that holds and flees and doesn't wave good-bye— and you can’t say no, under a black velvet sky and a silver slice of moon, with a blade in one hand, and a key in the other. Or, he’ll have nothing for show-n-tell in the locker room, while shedding polyester, the way you always imagined he could with you. Instead, he removed every layer without exposing a thing, and you peeled to the bone and gave to him your melted middle, while a joke he heard in grade school came back into his head and he laughed, open mouthed, closed hearted, and you cried because, once again, he won.