I'm sorry my healthiest coping mechanism is reading our most intimate details out loud #2

I thought it was bed-meltingly hot
when you'd speak your native language in my ear
right in the middle of taking me.  
 
I also thought you might use it to hide in plain sight.
So I looked up the Russian words for "I love you."
Waited for you to say them.
I had my head under your chin, cheek to your jacket,
just about to step outside for your cigarette,
you said it.
Really fast.
But unmistakeable.  
"Я тоже," I said. Me too.  
You took my face in your hands.
You beamed at me.
It was the brightest disbelief I've ever seen.
The freshest, most delicious kiss.
 
Perfect. Love can't be better than that.
I dare love to be better than that. I invite it to try.
 
Now that night for me is morning for you again,
I'm nineteen, I can't resist,
I'm cherry-picking men,
and I'm trying, but there ain't no shade of red,
no bite so wet,
no strong pit or long stem
that can make me forget.
 
And I don't drink,
instead I stay out too long on these sticky southern nights
out here in so much skin, buying round after round of drinks for the mosquitoes,  
because you're not coming back, and I have to give my blood to someone, something,
I don't mind the itch.
 
If you're listening, know that these nights, I might be high, but
I'm not even dimly lit;
those red crescent moons your fingernails drew on my hips
after I told you, "yknow, you don't need to be so gentle,"
pink proofs written on my skin
in a language we're both fluent in -
I keep away from the mirror lately
because they have completely faded.
I cannot take it.
 
I understand for our romance to have been  
so ridiculously divine,
maybe it needed to live, shine, flicker and die quickly.
After all,
falling stars are only thought to grant us wishes
because most of the time
it's just a black, still night.
 
I was at peace with this until the movement,  
the scratches and marks -
the shooting stars, the satellites
left my body for good.
a plant-polluted, pitch-black sky
that can do nothing but sit
and remember meteor showers.
Harvest moons. Everything that glowed.
 
I dare not touch those memories.
I have them in a corner of my mind,
velvet-roped - no flash photography,
hell no,
I'm saving them for the flash before my eyes
if I get a second before all my light is choked out.
 
If I do,
I'm going back to the first night with you,
we did not, could not sleep;
I'm going back to green tea with you, and jokes about sexual pee with you,  
speaking free with you about organized religion, angler fish, anything,
I'm going back to your bed and scratching your buzzed head
and I'm going back to breathe sun-soaked 8 AM through your open window
and leaky-blinds morning light with you,
all my mind exactly right with you,
those cruel, quick, blue-skied weeks with you -
 
wherever they went -
when I flicker out,
I'm following them.