poetry for the poetic: 5

LXII

you breathe next to me and i can feel my life pausing, as if it wants to push all the world's happiness into a single moment, and i wonder when the world became small enough to gravitate around a single star. there are places people go to disappear, and love must be one of them because i haven't seen my heart since you smiled. my tongue has become starved for the edge of your skin, with a thirst i can never fully quench because a story this intricate can never have an ending when tomorrow hasn't heard the wind sing against your ribs. you were a whisper i couldn't ignore, a voice only my dreams had known, but my soul had recognized forever. i always end up letting the night take me into her arms, wishing they were yours. i can sit here and tell you my only lie that i've got left, i miss you the most when i sit there and breathe without your laughter filling my lungs, but i won't. i can write my love for you into the songs we left on repeat, but darling, the drugs are getting to me and i've been meaning to let go of these habits. they say that addiction happens because of genetics, but if that's true, i must get my poetry from my mother's cheekbones, they're razor sharp and i've been stabbing myself in the back by leaning in to kiss you. a person who left when i needed you the most. i must get my anger from my father's black heart, it's an oil spill, but i've been an ocean that hasn't changed. i'm violent to myself, i'm violet to myself. i'm bruised to the core, i'm a blue seashore struggling to be more than lightless foam waiting for you to press toes into the sand, i've been running away from everything only to find myself with nothing. i'm the "i love you" a lover whispers to his sleeping beauty, you look peaceful when you're away from your worries, darling, won't you take me with you? i'm the sigh from a struggling college student who should've stayed inside the dorm to study, but instead he takes a hold of his party animal and smoked his lungs away, why not live it tonight he said. i'm the migraine he'll work through. if a kiss could heal the world, let me be the goodnight kiss you'll need to enter that wonderful nightfall dream. if i could count every star in the sky, i would skip all the way to infinity and tell you how it's beyond me to figure out your beauty. we live inside of words that must be chopped from a tree. we live inside of pain that must be rubbed off from shark's hide. i can't get enough of you like the midnight struggling to touch daylight, darling, i'm almost home. i would die without you here and you know it to be true because when i think about you, i think about the time before i met you and let me tell you how i've not lived until those seconds have passed and, i'm still fighting to let my skin stay, but with each passing day i'm still questioning the way wind sticks around to make tornados and hurricanes feel safe. and when i think about love, i think about us and yeah, you're not always happy, but when you tell me things like it has to work out some day, i think about when things will sound right without crying again and it'll be numb and happiness won't be instant, but as long as you're around– my run on sentences can continue, my typos will still happen because i'm raw and unedited and yeah I'll mess up some more, but as long as you're around– the fear of a mistake means i'll learn from it, the light from the world's smallest flashlight means there's still hope, the last fake smile i'll give to the world one day means i'm done bullshitting them with "i'm ok", "i'm fine", & "i'm managing", the chance that i'll lose you one day gives structure to my spine because i'll try up until that day– if every bone was meant to be broken and a heart was designed to be broken– i'll make a cast out of metal and make sure we'll never break again.