#thewritingsickness

thewritingsickness writing prompt challenge

I am reading you with my fingers, tracing contours like letters; you are my favourite book. Slow, soft page turning, I glean insights beyond your words, I brush my fingertips over your lips, then bring over my own to yours. We are my favourite story.

I have lived in so many bodies that none of them feel like home.

do you love me? I call out. do you think maybe you could learn to love me? I am deep, down in a sinkhole. I think, no one can even hear me. I am my own company. my voice falling short of the lip of my trench, a prickle of fear stings like a snakebite. with only my own ears to bear witness to the question, I am the only one left  to ask. to myself, I pitch it (blackly, at the  bottom of a hole)– do you love me? do you think maybe you could learn to love me? (whispered, for my ears only, I answer: if we ever are to fight our way back out, we cannot be fighting each other. yes, I say to the question, if I must learn, then please, teach me.

my pride(, leonine,) is an isolation chamber - you, outside, me, stuck within. you don't know it, but you already have me. I want to tell you how I refer to you as my boyfriend when I think of you, and how I won't tell you I love you until it starts leaking out. the vulnerability feels ascetic  and empty, stripped raw to the bone; I cover myself while I change into something more comfortable as we lie quietly and close together until you fall asleep. I tremble like the slack arms of a willow tree in the wind, a war waged within between seeming calm and strong, and  trying to flay myself open enough that I can believe you when you tell me that you love every inch of who I am.

thewritingsickness' writing challenge