17.999

All wrapped up in the didactic stagnancy of wishing for you on my birthday candles, it seems like the elegance that the empty sky once held, that faded for a couple days a couple hundred years ago, has returned to caress the moon like a lover in a different color and kiss the stars like they’re a map to a better place. With your lips like sugar and your teeth like question marks, you’re a splatter painted masterpiece of everything I could have ever wanted, created all right and tied up all wrong. I cry out little slices of my own mortality when I weep for you in the darkness of the memorable nights, designed to give cause to the unacceptable. It’s inside of those tears, I lie to the detector, and watch the way my heart rate spikes only when someone says your name. It’s cold against the back of my thighs because I’m slapping myself to get your attention and burning my skin so you’ll find me more beautiful than pitiful again. I’d grow my hair back in an instant if I could. I’d grow my hair back and mark your territory on my skin in ink and silver and send electrical shocks through my nightmarish blood stream until the broken back the rest of them left you with is gone. You’ll be able to stand up straight one day, without having to show off that you can stand up straight, and then it’ll be the moment past nothing and you’ll walk away. I’ll watch you with more regret than pride and more love for you than hatred for me. I’ve asked the magic 8 ball once again; all he says is that it must be hard for you to be the reason I want to stay when I’m the reason you need to go. Until the music stops and the bruises fade and the naivete of everything you whisper to me at midnight has quieted to wisdom, I’ll pour every part of my existence into your pressings and your heated elocution like it’s understandable to me anymore than to anyone else. I can feel the pulse you’re sending over, all damned, underneath your genomes of unique ambiguity and the whimsical way your white on black on white on black turns to color in my bedroom kaleidoscope. You’re all wrapped up in the didactic stagnancy of me wishing for you on my birthday candles. I don’t want to know if you wish for her.