DarkHeartLace

Your audacity was grating. I rubbed against it raw until I couldn't recognize my own face. Only then could I see myself for what you saw me. Meat to be butchered, ground up, tossed into a skillet and set to medium flame. Did you lick your fingers after you consumed me? Did it leave an aftertaste? Did I linger? You swore up and down that I mattered to you. Then you wiped your mouth of my remnants and asked the waiter for the check. Not once did you look back to your dirty plate. I was still there, a pool of residue. The speck on your fork. Stain on the napkin. Indulged and discarded without second thought. What will be your next meal? The new special? Can you point it out on the menu? I'd like to know the name. Her name. If you come back, I'll be served to the patron next to you. In every spoonful lifted to a stranger's mouth, I will peer to your table. I will compare the presentation of that dish. How well crafted it is. How you swallow every bite. And I will try and figure out

There is a storm brewing in your eyes. An ocean spray crashing onto the weathered rocks, colliding into the mainland, sending everything old and new awash. I cannot hold onto the fluidity that is your emotional capacity. I try to salvage the saltwater from your veins in glass containers. So desperate as to keep our memories from dissipating into clouds of vapor, I jump at every chance to grasp for you. But the glass always shatters. My hands spill red. I clench shards of who you used to be deep in my palms. As if when they pierce into my skin it is you that still enters my flesh. This desire knows no bounds. I can’t stop wanting you inside me, filling the crevices you promised to. You promised to keep me from eroding, yet you have ridden me with new fissures and no means to keep myself from falling apart. You couldn’t even keep yourself from becoming undone. Now you flood past and future with your catastrophic lies and we drown within waters that used to be shallow enough to wade

Your eyes were a certain kind of blue. Silver like tin, flimsy like foil. I held your gaze in my hands and withheld the urge to crush it between the understanding that we could never last, and my urgency to touch you. Those delicate lips parted, kissing mine, liberating a dove within me. I caged that bird in my stomach, where it fluttered when you kissed my forehead, parted my hair, whispered pretty words to me. The dove grew plump with the tenderness you imparted me. I recall so vividly that night, cast in violet light and adorned by the brilliance of the city. I looked out your apartment window to see it glowing. As I attempted to tally the tiny pockets of life radiating from the building in front of us, you wrapped your arms around my waist and I immediately lost count. We shared a beer sitting on your couch. It was my first time drinking straight from the bottle. The drink became less bitter the more we passed it back and forth, talking about nothing yet laughing about