eden
i would admit to you, maybe only you, that i feel quite loveless when you’re gone.
there’s a shape i hadn’t known my life was molded into — the chime of the door, the sigh after a sip of tea, a riverbed bench. then, you left, an elevator ride taking you miles away. the absence of the sensory song you’d once sung was appalling.
your absence forced me to hold up the margins of the earth alone, a kind of sisyphean promise you’d cursed me with. instead of the slick, charming feather-flown creature i’d always been, i had to become sinew and fascia pushing a grandfather just high enough to not sink below.
i told myself it all happened the way it did for a reason. even when the weight of it all started to make my body numb, threatening to overcome my shoulders.
i regret quietly. i mourn only for the way the loss dulled out the new colours i’d learned alongside you — here i was, holding up a desaturated planet, the blood lapping against my lips trying to give my words some life. it was a soft failure. the rock landed where it started. you were ascending and i was still fallen.
the velvet red walls and embroidered pillows i’d moved onto did little to make it better. the men i brought in, even worse, did nothing at all. i snapped my fingers, pulling light from hell: a storm barrelled through the mirrors on the ceiling and frozen drops of rain began to fall onto the bed.
you and i talked about this already ages ago, the possibility of this happening. i pray to you anyway, hoping you’ll appreciate the sick joke of it all. it’s like eden but this time your sword meets my neck. it’s like rome but i take the oyster into my mouth with both hands. we keep doing this, and i’m tired of it: i don’t want to argue about who left first. it happened. we find each other despite.
it’s december here now with a sun meant for the awakenings of june. the bodies are getting confused, waking up at dawn and starting their cars early, too early. the farm animals are giving birth premature. the pace is all wrong. no one would understand it, no one could fix it, save for you.
i look into the grey clouds above meant for summer thunderstorms. i can’t help but worry you’re looking down from a heaven that keeps its thumbs pressed against your eyes. i worry you’re secretly in agony, too full of pride to send a message, even if wounded. the angels are useless. the demons even moreso. the men, though, they keep coming in because i keep letting them. if anything, they are making it worse now.
but i have more pride than you, so i only wander my dreams to ask if anyone has seen you, and it is different there: i am quite violent with the need, the ebb and flow of pains in my chest and the aimless steps past the shop not enough to soothe my body. some mornings i wake with your face still in my eyes, having just found you. the dawn is slow, yet crawling past my defenses, lighting up my body from the outside. she shares that in common with you.
