your hate is always cleaner

one recent sunday you laid your head on my shoulder on the inbound green line train. at first it was cautiously done, and you prepared to call it an accident as soon as i flinched, but i did not. it’s been some time and i have not felt you so close again. 

to take, not to take. i can frame it. you drift from me, i drift, like you—following your lead as i can perceive it through a shattered lens. we dance in step, yours practiced and mine shallow, careful to glide over the frozen lake into which i may not fall. this could be our greatest act. there will not be another.

one recent sunday at dusk, while your head taunted the space between your neck and my shoulder, i did not tense my stature but i did slow my pulse to save the moment deeper in my body. i know how you are, and would've liked to be the one to tame it.

you are fueled by regret. you throw fits over each spiraling song whether or not you composed it, set it in motion. it is destructive and it’s been lagging lately like a tail behind you. you do not care for me. you’ve seen all too much, all too closely. when i smash the keys out of order you take your head away. do you think i like to be intense? buildings burn, build themselves again in reverse and then burn. i cannot help but see and time does not ease me, and maybe it should not. it’s all of me and i can’t get away—each year is a decade of its own, and these days i remember absolutely all of it. see how you suffocate my journals with secrets left to mold. i would’ve liked to be the one worth writing about, but instead i became you, your very own words, so intimately brought to life through false myth. the fifth wall. 

you said, isn’t there anyone else?, and i thought about your hands in my hair. it’s been some time. you know, no one else will touch me. at least with your teeth in my neck, you admit that i exist. that’s all i wanted.