I can still see what you are in the dark,
all the ways we knew how to stay warm,
the stories that can no longer keep you safe.
Things between us that remain
silent like a reluctant pact.
The name trying to imprint itself upon you
may be more sweet and pure,
but I never needed blood or ink
or to be inside you to stay devoted.
I still want us to wake up together,
slip beneath the blankets when seeing
the sky is just an infinite gray sheet,
we would never let anyone else in
and be the only mystery for the other to uncover.
Instead of skin becoming so lost
in the surrender of its own kind.
Even if tethered to me,
some coils snap when close,
or just from one last sigh
hovering where I reached for you.
Even when I see you in everything,
in summer’s heated rainfall battering
our street in its ghostly dancing mist,
or in the cracks webbing through the ice
covering our windows in December.
No matter how far you’ve withdrawn,
I can still feel you in the dark,
all the ways you know how to feel love
are stories that cannot shelter me,
they remain between us as a silent pact.
The name that barely grazed
may already be etching me away,
making me illegible to your heart,
I never needed to be inside you
to guard what I promised to.
I’m still where we’re wrapped up together,
where I see you in everything,
connecting the letters of your name with stars,
spelling it out with the glass shattering around me,
your eyes gleaming through every shard.
I can still read who you are in the dark
with more depth than any flash or rush
could ever probe and spiral into you,
but your essence is already pulling away
When skin gets fevered by its own kind,
lost in its own perfumes that I know too well.
But remain a mystery I may
never be able to fully uncover.
