flashback
In the silence, you wait for me. My mind wanders to nighttime in a town I've long since left behind to a room I've long since locked.
You touch me lightly electroplating gold onto a lesser metal. All I see in the silence is the contrast of your hand on my arm a black-and-white picture of lightning at night. My eyes, humid with the weight of exhaustion and memory like autumn leaves settling on an empty lake-- I want you to know my stories before they sink.
I rest in your arms like a hammock. You are strong as a hemlock regal as an oak proud as a cedar. For a moment, I let myself feel safe.
Because you are good. You are so good that my friends are jealous. You are handsome a gentleman smart and             different when we close the door.
In the darkness, my memories hover between us like a one-way mirror so clean, you haven't yet realized it's there. Will you start your interrogation soon or wait out a confession? Which parts of my life do you want to know? I can give it to you in photographs keep an album in my chest for just such cases. Here is the first man I loved (I still haven't stopped thinking about him). Here is the man who assaulted me when I was trying to forget. Your fingers are shaped like his when you stand too close, and I keep hearing his voice in your words. In your ultimatums and pressing and moving to fast you can ask all the questions you want though you hear only guilt even as I scream my innocence.
But you are good handsome a gentleman smart so surely you would understand what happened when I tell you my stories are sinking?
Once long ago at nighttime in a town I've long since left behind in a room that I've long since locked a man hovered above me like a hot air balloon and my fire wasn't strong enough to keep him from coming down.
I've been washing the memories out of my hair for years. But tonight I smell it again in your sweat, feel it in your grip as you forget what you asked me forget how I answered and I shudder as your smile takes me back.
I am trapped in your arms like a kite string. you are poisonous as a hemlock strong as an oak eerie as a cedar. For a moment, I am lost. floating away on an empty lake in a canoe of fallen memories that you will never know.
