count

It begins with how much I want you. It starts and stops with how much I love you. The way these trails of ink and breath still the sentiment. The way these words flicker and burn leaving your lips. This love note certainty somehow seeming sediment, weighed with familiar truths. This love letter rewritten again and again, a life of trying to get it right.

Words alone came back to haunt me. It was with words alone that I would feel the leaden weight left of matter. The burden that being leaves leaning against the fence. I thirst and hunger, my kisses like cracklins. The sense of the place where heat and life meet to settle the difference. The searing song flesh sings as the embers stir. I lean close and say I love you even though I am hardly even real. I kiss you slowly even though you are hardly ever here. I count each aching beaten breath, every word older than any ghost.

You wake swiftly and feel the dry air at your lips,  that sense of eyes absent in the dark. Your face still lovely drowned in shadows. Your voice so certain by strength of heart and faith, your blood a vivid song through your fevered night. I reach for you in the brushwork of these dreams. I touch you with your hands and fingers, whispers adrift skin tight. It ends with your name lingering on my tongue, your memory my only tomorrow. The count always coming down to you.