Unfasten the mask of determination from your face. It's papier-mâché and already ruined from the rainstorms you keep walking through. Hurricanes and gale-force-glares have given you that sallow, drowned-man complexion, but you won't come in out of the rain, so I don't leave the light on anymore.

Shh, shh, the silence is fragile, don't break it. Don't ruin this. I swear to god, don't bloody ruin this. We're too delicate for words (words like knives in my back, I know all the things they say you say, and don't think I don't. Don't ever think I don't. Don't ever forgive yourself.) and too old for whispers, but we can still kiss inside this crime scene.

There are lies in your mouth. I can taste them whenever you forget to hide them, tuck them away in dark, curled in corners. There is penance in your fingertips on my thigh. There, there, there it is.

I'll be so still, you won't remember I exist. I'll listen to the signals you don't know how to conceal. You've got a heartbeat like a shotgun blast, but I have a silver tongue (On your lips and now on your neck. A question mark curved into your navel—does this sting? I hope it does.)

That simmering ache that's building and burning in your eyes and your bones, I'll soothe it. Fingernails down your side trace your silhouette in the dark. Breaths like "ahh" and "faster" and "please." Eyelash-flutters like innocence (a close facsimile, but I've seen the real thing, and it was what made you beautiful, before).

Vertebrae like finger holds, I have you in my grasp (with slip-sticky palms). Your spine is my instrument and your mouth is musical – ohgodohh and pleaseyes - cacophonies of obscenity and sweet, honeyed vowels.

You—you of tearing muscles mending new, you of whispered things caught in the wind and carried out to sea—you were like harbor, once. You were safe shore. You were the earth and I clung (slowslow and ohgodyesnowfaster) like a shipwrecked sailor, prayed (pleasegodyeahplease) like a lifeboat cannibal, died (...oh and ...ohhh) like a drowning man.

Lighting splits the sky outside and the earth groans. It is old, like our excuses when we turn away, roll apart. I want to hold you so close it hurts (I want you to feel it).

I sold my soul for this—for black pools beneath each eye and the way your sweat tastes in the dark.