for a girl who mends my heart
you are a crystal clear bell in the middle of a cold winter night. when i am lying face down in the snow, waiting for the blood to freeze in my veins, you give me the will to turn over, cough, open my eyes. you are the biting air filling my lungs. you are alive, is what i hear when you skim my skin. you are still here.
you are still here even though you are 4000 miles away. when my collarbones begin to stab through my neck, you are there to put things back where they belong. i am a jigsaw - no, i am a membrane. i know you'll appreciate that. i'm the phospholipid layer and you're the cholesterol. you make sure i do not bend so much that i fall apart.
i fall apart when i feel lost to the world but you always keep me within an arm's reach. you glue me back together as best as you can, the way you remember i was before i gave in to my own weaknesses, my own flaws. my fault lines are many and deep and filled with layers and layers of sticky words. you keep trying to stick me back together. there are no words sweet enough to fix me entirely.
but you do not have to fix me. i am almost healed now, the cracks are there but i am not shattered, or broken, or disabled. i don't know about you. i try to patch you up when i can, rubbing on bandages when you bleed and soothing you to sleep with the kindest things i can think to say. you breathe sunlight and exhale kindness. i see you in the girls leaning against flats too tall, cigarettes in between their fingers. you have built yourself up so high just to drown yourself in bottles. your choices are yours to make and i will catch you like a safety net, i will keep you off the cold ground - but don't set the tightrope on fire.
you're entirely too beautiful to numb yourself. anesthetic doesn't do the job half as well as you do. you have not paved a dangerous road but my heart pauses for you on occasion. you have not paved a dangerous road but the tools are at your side and you could, you could, you could.
my girl, the girl that mends my heart, she's like the winter breeze, all whispers and nighttime quiet. when she is all that surrounds me, she gives me that dizzy warmth that comes just before a cold death. i only believe the words "i love you" when they come from her hot lips. i only believe the words that come from her honest throat.
