sweetheart

You touch the points of the farthest star yet settled, name nestled on the tip of your tongue. You nuzzle the subtle change in the temperature of the air, one step down out the house and into the night. It is this reach, this press I ache after. Each and every day awaits, the last lingering in the company of the pack. Each and every bruise blooms, none of them yours.

This is the false witness, the way the hour lolls and the air shames. That heat of blush, the rushing witness of so much blood. Bare flesh and distant winds. The physical witness of flustered sheets and television light to guide you. That cage tight around your heart, the density of darkness staring back, clasping each instant between breaths. The echo finding its way back to you, the strange weight of your own voice in the night. Alone seethes upon the kitchen tile. Alone the brush of some other myth leaving for good.

You radiate in the quiet of this moment, your image incandescent, that thrill of willing light. You settle beneath the bed of dreaming, you settle beneath the reckless bets of faith. That intimacy of the dearly imagined, that notion just close enough to miss. Your eyes, open in some unlit mendicancy, that weary admission of wait. Thinking I could be so near. Thinking some invention laden with patent ache could be true. That native tense of reach and soar, your hand enfolded in mine.