I still remember the blank canvas of your face
The dull, stupid glare of your eyes like headlights on the highway
And I remember how I wanted to paint the canvas with autumn-colored kisses
How I wanted to see the brush strokes of my lips sweeping across your cheekbones
But I can’t even speak
Dragonflies on my lips
Glass-colored wings against my mouth like kisses
That you’ll never give
Through sin-streaked glass I see the moon perched like God
On red brick
It must have been then when I surrendered
Since then I have been a ghost
Walking in waters where fish linger like photographs
My footprints are thunder in the dark sky
I almost laugh to think that you left so much, and I so little
I still remember your hands like deserts, fingerprints like red sand
Across my vulnerable stomach
A trail of sun-colored bruises where your knuckles brushed my neck.
If I try
I can forget the smoky way your fingers curled around my hip
And your question mark smile.
But now I’m bleeding from the in-between—
I can’t say it, not in the coal-dark night,
Where we tangled together in blue cotton sheets
Kisses like constellations across my back,
Orion’s Belt sweeps over my collarbone
If I try
I can forget the way lightning danced across my skin
When your fingertips adored me,
As you hurt me
As you broke me
And killed my spirit.