boy; body; book

T.N.

the boy lies open like a book:

waiting for me to scrawl his body on the pages,

smear on his wrists with ink-sweet breath. rewrite

the cursive of the spine like an ocean wave

and let it wash away the loneliness. 

this love is felt-tipped, shades of january blue

bleached pale under the sun. he tells me to 

improvise: trace over the letters like veins

and maybe we can make something out of it.

maybe i can bring his body back to him

if only he didn’t give it up for me. if only

he didn’t mistake selfish for selfless

and leave me with a silhouette gilded in moonlight.

his eyes dart in quicksilver, too frenzied

for me to notice the shadows. a voice like dust 

cries out for me to breathe life into it. 

i leaf through the chapters anyways —

— sadness eroding like a stone across water,

anger a flood of synapses and nerves,

denial smothering like a blanket over desperate bodies.

the boy presses something heavy into my palm.

an eraser. ctrl-z

for this miswired synapse

we call love.

he tells me it could be over

if i wanted. and i tell him

it already is.

i erase all the words in my book so he has nothing left to say.