Storying

 

She tells me I'm beautiful while counting my scars - she's doomed and half knows it. It's not like the others, who just wanted to kiss the dragon so they can spit flames. We keep veering back and forth, changing shapes, becoming strangers, then reacquaint. Each time losing something for something new, and this is more than acceptance.

Love sits in holes,
waits deeper than worms. I wanna sit on top with a spade, a handful of salt and dig my heart a bottomless grave when I see her shrinking
like snail antennae
from alien touch. I'm not selfless
enough, for this to be about love.

The brazen sycamore leaves lay, preserved by winter, still thick in May - like a thousand dried starfish, or detached hands that can't seem to let go. Still wanting to kiss in the dark, and feel by instinct rather than intelligence. Something a little less pronounced, like the small fly clinking on the lightbulb too sporadic to burn, but very there in a silent room with an ear in the corner. It's these sounds that measure empty gaps; the chronometer of the hollow; the things you don't notice, between the things you remember; storying.