I Want You, Even When You Crave Her

By

I want to peer into you. Let me peel back the smiles, the quips, and the clever banter and find the nightmares where you’re still happy with her.

I’ve always been most attracted to the deep red blood that throbs in scars from hands unfamiliar. I think I could smell the pain in your history and felt my mouth water. I want to taste the tears you spent on someone else who cracked your bones open and drank the marrow of your soul.

I want to know how she left you split open and guarded- I want to know if you survived.

Because I’m not sure yet if I have.

We are like cancer patients, comparing treatments and hoping these ghosts can be completely eradicated from our hearts.

I don’t want to be the poison you pour into your veins to forget her, I want to be the one sitting next to you that can show you the scars mine left. We are the same kind of pain.

I want to reach out and touch one another with shaky hands from the ghosts that smile into someone else’s lips now. Let me rip out your stitches and try to sow my own. Planting each one with a kiss and watching your story bloom and wilt under my lips.

I don’t want your happiness, until you let me see all of it.

I want the ugly parts that ache for someone to slip their fingers inside and sigh. Let me hold your love for her. I’ll be gentle. I’ll kiss its feet and praise its holiness. I’ll caress every burnt and broken shard of this goddamn temple. Let me feel the way she can still make you quiet, let me feel her lips in your touch. Show me the way she would make you feel like forever was in the sound of her waking up, limbs wrapped up with yours.

And I promise I’ll let you taste the name on my tongue.

I’ll show you the way I bent myself into the words I poured over them. Because we can’t survive unless we let them touch us. We can’t be who we were before they found our softest parts, so let’s toast to this haunting and fuck under their eyes.

I want to hold you when you want nothing more than her arms folding across the planes of your body, resistance giving way like a house of cards.

I want you to know that I want you even then, especially then. Because I will dream of another’s body, voice, love and I will want you still, even then, especially then.

I am not naive, I am not broken, I am human and so are you.

And that’s how I want you.