We're friends now.

He's spoken my name.

He's seen my eyes.

And really looked.

For something I don't show anybody.

For something I'm not even sure is there for the finding.

He hasn't touched me but he has.

He doesn't have to.

There's no need anymore.

I can't feel anything but the nothing and everything all the time.

He sees it.

The wrinkles pushing their way past me to the surface, forcing me to sink.

The fingertips of his eyelashes glide all over my goosebumps.

This entire country shivers and bundles her shawl.

There's no time for such frivolity.

But is there?

The watchmaker has eyelashes with thumbs that point,

up,

up,

all the way down.

This shawl isn't so warm anymore. Hell is colder.

I can feel him watching me.

He's working on an answer to the question he hasn't asked me yet.

His irises are rimmed and suddenly the edge of the pool isn't so far away and suddenly I'm breathing in air that travels up my nose in awkward bubbles.

Teenage bubbles that don't know how to pop yet because they were waiting for the "right person".

Baby bubbles scrubbing their fat knees on the cold hard floors of my cherrywood pores.

Amber waves of grain that aren't amber and aren't grain but are something I'll twist in my fingers and ripple these waterfall tears mixed with these butchered abstract metaphors all the way through,

all the way through until I can't see anything but red violets and blue roses and daffodils,

because I like those.

Or,

at least, I like the way it feels on my tongue.

Just the way the sensation of it all feels.

And now I'm smelling nail polish remover and now I'm in that basement again,

reminding him nothing bad has ever,

ever happened to me in this life.

Reminding him he better not crunch under my shoe like a maple leaf but not the ones from the ice,

the silky silver syrupy dreamland filled with real nightmares in our daylight.

Not the ones in my new neighborhood.

Not the ones that look like my hands because nothing bad has ever happened to me.

And then,

then,

then, I remind him:

I love him.

And he better not fuck this up.

Not this time.

Not ever.