we start at the end. not of a story, i mean, a hallway. your hand on the exit, eyes cradling an apology your mouth doesn’t give while my own stays shut. you were never one to apologize. and i watch as you turn to leave
but if this is our novel then flip to the middle. where you find me in night time car rides, where i let my eyes follow the streetlights, skip from one lamp to the next, but we drive too quickly for my eyes to ever land. so i settle on the gaps between them, the snippets of sky contained by streetlight divisions and telephone poles. i find you in the spaces between blurred lines. where i form you from pitch black, trace you from constellations until i remember what you look like. i close my eyes on the way home
i skip back to the beginning. where i meet you again, but only as a memory. a flickering image down the hall, fluorescent light casting a halo behind your head, you are a poltergeist, spinning silk between your fingertips and weaving fractions of our past until they make something whole
you are a seamstress. and you stitch a quick fix for the bed we never made, a blanket to drape over open wounds. you wrap me up in covers until i remember birdsong spilling from the curve of your mouth and the warmth of your hands cradling my cheeks and the murmurs, soft as i fall asleep. your memory holds me until i do not remember the lash of your tongue and your words coated in acid. you make me forget the toxin. i only taste the honey
because you are a hornet’s nest i jostled within my arms when i held you too close, mistaking rot for honeycomb, a cut tongue for cherry gumdrops
so i always return to our prologue. where you are still honeycomb, and cough syrup, and we meet apart from hallways and car rides, and we watch as light trickles between my fingertips when i hold them up to the sun. you raise your hand to join me so we can see our skin turn pink. my cheeks do the same, and only the sun rivals your laugh as you turn to look at me. you encompass warmth in one body
but epilogue, you are not the only source. and i do not need you to warm my hands when you tell me that i’m draining. that i strip you of heat, whittle you down until you’re less than what you started as
epilogue, i never stole your warmth. never asked why it took more out of you to hold me than to have my arms around you. you wanted to be held, so i gave you my hands and hoped they were enough for you, swallowed my pride when they weren’t. i gave you a home within my chest, but you didn’t want a place to stay, nor a body to hold. you wanted something to own. so i gave you myself and hoped it was enough, swallowed my pride when i wasn’t
epilogue, i’m sorry i wasn’t enough for you. but i won’t apologize for leaving
i wish i could smooth out the dog-ears so you wouldn’t see how many times i’ve flipped back to our prologue
but for now, i stand at the end. not a hallway, a story. i close my eyes and when they open
