Had this come at a better time I would have placed my hands into your hands and we would have forgotten who was holding on to who. Instead I lower my eyes as your eyes close and bow to the end of whatever we had between us constructed. Little melting paper tissue promises, we traded words wrist over wrist, your mouth warm upon my alabaster skin.
I am the draining of the cup, I am the small child who writes only of leaving, only of the lightning in dark clouds. How even the slenderest tears streak the breast with fire before running aground.
I am picking at my fingernails and you are staring out the window of a neon train as my legs begin to burn. I used to dream I was covered in red ink and the more closely I inspected the skin the higher the vines of crimson would curl up and up across my stomach, my chest, my neck, and then I would awaken, awash in thrumming laps of sweat.
And here we are together parting ways, two hearts divided in ten thousand ways.
I watch as the gray buildings of the city sink slowly into the raging sun. I think of all the people reaching for something they do not understand and missing it like hell anyway.
Why do they think everything destructive is so pretty
and that everything pretty
is not them.
.
Allison Marie Conway 