Trail runs: From you to you.

   
I closed the door silently,  
slipped my shoes on when I    
was outside  
   
so as not to wake you  
   
you sleep so lightly,  
and I fear I could sit    
in crimson    
watching you breathe  
in black and white  
for as long as this    
strange sorcery  
allows  
   
you’re always the most  
beautiful to me  
when you aren’t looking    
   
I laced up    
and thought it    
strange that I find peace running  
when I’ve never run from    
a fucking thing    
in my life.  
   
Or maybe that’s how the    
universe balances    
   
Crawling out of your  
arms without waking you    
didn’t feel  
balanced, it felt    
like madness  
   
and the madness grew the    
further I ran  
the faster I went  
the harder I pushed    
until it was just air ripping  
from my pores like wasted wishes    
like half-remembered dreams  
   
like the way your broken fits    
   
mine  
   
I took a turn into woods with    
no path, not slowing down  
not giving a bit of quarter    
as branches ripped    
across tender things  
exposed in this    
quiet midnight,  
raking my face raw  
catching my hair  
stripping the skin  
from my legs  
with no soundtrack,  
no night song of crickets  
or strange rustlings of  
beasts that may have  
been dragons and fairies    
in another time  
   
Nothing    
save the next shattered    
attempt to find air  
   
nature itself standing apart  
from me as I wonder  
   
where the fuck am I  
   
what the fuck am I doing    
   
Was it all just my own    
weakness,    
wanting to be… just me  
just me  
so damn desperately    
that I hallucinated a world in which  
I gave and received equally of  
something  
   
good.    
   
kind.    
   
better.    
   
   
fuck, was it?  
   
But there isn’t an answer in this    
wild palace.  
   
….    
   
   
you wake,    
I’m curled lightly against  
your back,  
barely there,    
barely touching,    
leaves in my hair,  
scratches on my face  
like some sort of dark fae creature;  
   
I twitch at your movement,  
fitful in my sleep,  
as if still hunted by wasted wishes,  
by half-remembered dreams,    
   
your arm slips  
around my ragged waist  
and I sigh into the feel our bodies    
twining quietly  
around each other.