02

it has been six days since i sold my soul for seven cents. six days since i laced your shoes tight in the leather backseat (so you won't fall for anybody else). six days since the weight of your ribs pressed into mine and we exhaled our hearts into the midnight air, chain-smoking until three, writing stories in the window fog—watching them dissolve with the first breath of dawn.

"save me," you break and fold, your voice raw, cigarette-stained, something ruined and unholy.

a liquor bottle for each nirvana song that crackles through the static and every piece of bubblegum that turns bitter from the nicotine between your teeth.

my bones are tender from the mary jane you poured down my throat and now i cut myself on your edges—sharp, jagged, a love lined with glass. but there's the sun in your eyes and there is i. and i... am held captive in your kiss. i am bruised underneath your sunlight or the headlights, lilac upon your bathroom floor, and deranged with your head between my thighs.

poised as you ignite the flame along my fragile lines, the ones that whisper down my thighs like desperate prayers. you tell me not to overanalyze things because i'm only eighteen and you're only a god. because i'm half-naked in your levi jeans, because you're mine (?) because i am anything you say i am when your lips find the hollow between my ribs and claim me.

so the alcohol upon my lips is only ever a taste test, and the weekends are for worshipping a religion that only exists three miles out of town, in the backseat of your father's car, beneath neon signs that hum like distant angels.

your lips are like tangerines, sharp and bittersweet, but your eyes are sad, and sad is the only way to describe the way they saturate with white lies and hallway goodbyes and your pure, unwavering passion for moon-shooting.

you are unforgiving and most of the time high on amphetamines. you say we don't belong to no city, then tell me the city belongs to us, and i never truly understand your grey-coded speak. i never understand the tv shows you watch or why your eyes trace the walls and the exit signs we miss but never, never land on mine. why you kiss me in the corridor only to say goodbye.

and i want to scream and i want to burn for the fever you've put inside me, but i am only ever at peace when i am blowing out the 405 candle in your name, wearing your violence upon my waist like a silk ribbon, tied too tight.

and i am always minute(s) away from falling apart or falling in love.

although with you, i hope it's the latter...