the prayer of a distant lover
stay, you said, last summer, and the word swallowed the silence around our newly still selves, so i could only respond in the language of our lips pressed together
one person always breaks a kiss first
one of us always has to leave
i whisper “stay” to my sheets now in a bed you’ve never seen, as if you could hear me a country away. stay in the space i’ve reserved between my fingers for your hand, against the swell of my stomach where your head rests so sweetly. let me marvel at your eyelashes one more time. stay because damn, i have never felt a feeling more divine than your eyes on me and the lazy way your breathing matches mine.
when i wait for you to answer the phone the hiss between rings sounds like your sleepy sigh, and it is exactly because only you could make me feel so alive that i don’t want to do this anymore.
i want to be with you but you are not here and pretending it doesn’t make a difference is like, god, saying the schuylkill river and the pacific ocean are the same because they’re both water
god i wish to be washed away in you
so since the moon controls the tides maybe we can break the way they do, salty and choking and sand in our eyes only to be swept back together soon
did you know we’re all made of stardust? did you?
our particles traversed a cosmos to find each other.
i love you.
