#recluse

Skin deep convolutions,

Water running down your veins.

Cool down to sea level,

Let the light pass through.

.

I want to see your soul again,

Hear the melodies in your tones,

Love like an X-ray beam,

Glowing bright against your bones.

.

Every ridge reminds me of mountains.

Every dip, like a valley in bloom.

Skin deep, I'm barely scratching,

What you're hiding in a lead-lined room.

.

Tell me all about your stories,

Whether they're real or make-believe.

Let me explore more of your passions,

I hold my breath to let you breathe.

.

What I love lies deep inside you,

Because it's unimaginable.

Even x-rays can't describe your heart,

I keep rereading what I wrote and I do not know if I sound like a man confessing love or a man trying to explain why he should not be allowed to. You make everything in me feel louder. Not kinder. Just louder. Like the parts I buried did not disappear, they only learned your name. I am used to being looked at like a warning sign. Like something you stand too close to and regret later. But you… you look at me like I am still becoming something instead of something already finished. That confuses me more than anything else. I do not know what I am supposed to do with gentleness when it is given freely. I keep expecting it to have terms. I keep waiting for you to take it back and tell me it was a mistake to ever see me clearly. But you do not. And that is worse, in some ways. Because it leaves me responsible for what I become next. If I am honest, I do not think I understand love the way people describe it. I understand presence. I understand staying. I understand hands that do not flinch. You stay. I think that is what is breaking me open, not the idea of being loved, but the fact that you continue to do it without asking me to be smaller first. I do not know what name to give that. If I am a ruined thing, then you are the first person who did not try to fix me by erasing the damage. You just… sat beside it. So I will keep calling it you. And if there is something in me that is worth anything at all, I think it is learning how to stay when I want to run. I am still afraid you will wake up one day and see what I see when I look at myself. But for now, I will let you be wrong about me. It is the only kindness I know how to accept without turning it into something sharp.

I need the sunshine.

Would you still love me if I wasn't a romantic man? If I had no idea what men do for women, when flowers feel too personal and my heart feels like it's remained in an empty cavity for so long it rotted all on its own. I felt like God's rays would never reach me, and now that they had, I've received the warmth in your gaze, any other man would had turned you down. You broken, ruined thing..., and every man called me a fag for being with him against my will. You held me like a gentle thing, and when my body felt how deep my love went for you, I never thought I'd be good for any woman.. oh, my Girlfriend. Who looks at me like a man worth her time, when I'd be at her knees groveling for her respect any other time. I am a pathetic man. Rivaled only by who hurts me. And you, you stand there like I am something grand. And your friends brother told me I am on the asexual spectrum, reserved for those who feel such as I. I am not a romantic man, but I'd go against what I am comfortable and capable of for you, cupid speared me between the ribs and I cannot take the arrowhead out, and he must've aimed for the lung because I cannot breathe when I am around you. You look at me like I am a man worth your time. I do not understand it. I keep waiting for you to see what everyone else saw, and you never do. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for you to hurt me. And I suppose in a way, you are too. We're both ruined broken things, and maybe that's what makes us so .. compatible. When I hold you I feel a strong woman, much more smart than I ever could be at reading between lines. You would react faster. But you wouldn't have to with me, I would never bring you harm. You hold me as though I am something fragile. Nobody has ever mistaken me for fragile before. Other than in the head. Thank you, I guess. My flowers may be wilting, but I gave them to you because they reminded me of us. Because even though they aren't perfect or smell that good, rotting flowers make the prettiest colors to me. The deep reds, maroon and almost velvet shine to them make me inspired to be who I am. At least in roses. ——I love roses. I love you, and I hope this letter makes since in it's jumbled rambled way, Mikhail Rusovych Larventuisauch. We deserve sunshine, keep your eyes on me.

-glyph

It's almost as if all Humans have the thought of God once in their life, perhaps are too afraid to worship a God.

Against the crisp chill of the facility air and the rising tension of young recruits, soon to be trained soldiers. Cogs in a machine that beat to its own rhythm not of themselves.

It wouldn’t matter if the bars are all closed by the time we get out, covered in ashes from wars that children fight in later years to find out it’s about corporate greed or gluttonous landmarks. A legacy that is considered honorable, which loses its honor when it becomes forced. The aggravating grind of wheels on gravel roads.

The sniggering of men that are too big in the brawn area to have brains,

Even as I shift in my seat, and as they hold my cheek and make sure I drift off rather than plummet into sleep.

I imagine them ripping through, spreading with gray speckled white feathers. Showing undefined divinity.

Showing I was pure still. Even with the gray.

I would heal from the wound.

Just like a buck shedding its velvet.

I can breathe again, but it feels like breathing in mint.

Painful, burning.

Fully blind. Devoted to our lord and savior.

My hands raise as a crown of thorns is placed on my head.

Perhaps, this is just what I needed.