like night and day

She becomes an entirely different girl on that porch. No longer even the sleepy girl that brings the night with her wherever she goes, no longer young and naively sick over romance novels and newspaper clippings glued behind the bookshelves. Some of her still comes through, but in tiny bursts so quick and subtle, you’d think you imagined them; that if you took your eye off of her — any part of her — you’d miss it. As lithe and quiet as a single raindrop, as if it were the only one hitting the ground at that precise time, before just as softly it’s hidden to blend in with the rest. It’s not in the way she dresses - pink fuzzy socks tugged up above her ankles, a black button up with buttons confused, exposing a deep silver of her chest, the sleeves only tight on her wrists, slipping off of her shoulders before, as if an old habit, she would reach up and slide it back up to cover her skin.

She sat in her grandmother’s rocking chair, one knee pulled resting against the wooden arm rest, the other with toes pointed on the porch boards pushing off just enough to keep her moving. Fists clenched with fingers. Other than that, she wouldn’t move much. No longer the fluid, fleeting girl with too much to say, too much to listen to, too much to take in. Though you had better believe she still felt; still the girl with too much to feel, too much to listen to, too much to take in. The rain had grown so furiously that it turned the entire property just across the railing to a clouded haze, but her eyes remained on the dirt road where they had walked before. Raindrop signals. Her brow would furrow, creating a troubled indent above it, and just then, that one fragile little movement would set everything off. Then, you’d see it: a bold strike of colour dripping from within her first, the thick blood of the flower crumpled in her hold, trailing down the edge of her hand, sneaking beneath the washed black of her shirt, falling to the porch. Stains of plum. The damp discolouration of her socks, their soles muddy with rainwater and pebbles, small blades of grass.

The girl who buried her nights in her grandmother’s garden to introduce herself to the dawn, to mingle with the morning — so sad that she had kept it a stranger for so long. They knew nothing about one another. Never once had they talked, never once had she watched it, greeted it, walked with it. An entire life she had left behind, all inches of the world illuminated, drowsy eyes sensitive to the light. She knew the night so well, but it was the day who she had always slept with. It was the day who nourished her, gave her a break from the tireless fantasies, the troubles that weren’t hers, the things she’d wanted to do so desperately and those others that she didn’t… desperately. Flooded her body and drained the wine to just her lips, leaving it there, but hiding the rest (because it knew she loved the taste). It was the morning that held her, that took care of her, that let her sleep. The night was just as an introduction, a deep violet tease in her ear to wander, but the morning finished her.

Every weekend at her grandmother’s, she slept in that rocking chair. No one knew just when she had gotten herself up… if she had even fallen asleep, if she had even found the bed. You’d find her before noon with plum stains, muddied feet, and the morning on her cheeks, taking her, again, away from everything that the night stirred up within her.

Slept with her. Flooded her body. Held her. Took care of her, and let her sleep.

I’ll be the night blanketing your moon, freckles across my sky leaving a path to watch your bare feet from stones. I’ll be the shirt that drowns your bones. The espresso drizzling every morning, the steam rolling beneath the door, the pelting rain warming your frame. The heat dripping, clung onto your neck, holding your dark hair salty and warm. I’ll be the hips cornered in your palms. I’ll be the page you keep when your eyes give up at night, folded over and covered among your pages. I’ll read you aloud. I’ll be the murmurs through the open window, the orange peels staining your fingertips, my skin beneath your nails. I’ll be the steam dancing along your lips from the coffee, the tinge against your thighs where the mug balances. The fire escape that you give your secrets to, the cigarette parched between your lips. I’ll be the chain that drapes your chest. I’ll be the alcohol, the weight laying along your tongue and slurring your ridges. I’ll be the flour prints across the countertop, the sugar along your wrists, the vanilla against the roof of your mouth.

Tasting you while you taste me all the while, I will.

NOTES: on summer II.

I didn’t know it then, but that summer was my end.

I used to love according to the seasons, draining the richness off of each transition’s tongue and hiding it between my lips, leaving them thinking they have memorised me, but I will know that they have not learned me; I think too much, I talk too much, I think myself out of happiness and talk myself into happiness rather than seeing that actual happiness with substance doesn’t really require thinking at all. I’m run by my troubled heart. And that’s why I have ended up the most diversely loved, and diversely lonely girl to live. Clueless, scared, and unsatisfied; I wasn’t trying to hurt them - I just wanted to see what their bones tasted like.

I didn’t know it then, but I thought you would end up the same. I imagined that you’d feel the shift in your stomach as I feel it in my knees, watching as my attention heartbreakingly averts to the temptations of fall, the sorrows of winter, the spirituality of spring, and the flight of summer - that’s when I would run. And watch is all you will be able to do. I could move on with my life and simply meet a bright set of eyes with unrefined scruff to complement a nice, grizzly jaw, and for the entire night, I am up and out late enough with the hope that I might just get a glimpse of what it’d be like to feel, maybe enough for me make the wrong choice for one last night.

I didn’t know it then, but I came to find that I cannot love that way.

I want to feel so heavily that sometimes, I just need to rid of pieces of them. I want to get angry at them. I want to be challenged. Sometimes, I don’t want to leave them alone when they ask me to because I might persistently want them and want to be the one that helps them, because I cannot stand the thought of seeing them falling apart. I want to roll over and look at them and know that it’s understood, that I’m out, and that I’m safe, and that I’m so sorry it took so long, but I’m here, I’ve opened up, and I’m home. I want to buy them gifts, I want be flooded in their favourite shirts. I want to buy them holiday cards and run out of room to write because I’ve gotten carried away. I want to cry when I’ve given them something because of how much of myself I’ve exhausted into it. I want to pull them back into bed and leave it messy throughout the day only to tempt both of us back into it. I want to never let them fall asleep unhappy. I want something I cannot escape. I want to hurry home to them. I want to be their peace. I don’t want to need anyone else. I want to drive them up the wall. I want to be smothered, loved, and familiar. I want to belong to someone entirely and comfortably, and they, to me. I don’t want to run anymore. I want a soul I can bind with. I want relief. Whoever chooses to love me forever may never comprehend that they may never be able to dissect exactly what it is I’m trying to say or show them, because of how long I’ve been running, because I am just as daft and as dazed they might be.

I didn’t know it then, but that summer was my end. When you found me vulnerable and broken and decided you would intoxicate yourself with me. You made me save these ugly parts of myself. You knew I wouldn’t be the lover I wanted to be if I threw it away. I was - and am - all over the place, but each time I handed you an excuse to run me bare, you brought me with you.

I sure as hell didn’t know it then, but I know this now: I owe it to you not to run. I owe it to you to come home. I owe it to you to let you love me when it’s not summer anymore, and the temperature plummets below freezing when the flowers wilt and dangle along the countertop. You’ll be able to say that you loved me by the seasons, adjusting yourself to each of the chills and touches of warmth inside of me. You have me. Undone, unkept, and raw.

I’d wait for you to come home, bottom balanced on the sill, biting the hearts out of the strawberries I’d let dangle from my fingers before dropping them to the earth beneath. There were things that drew me to you with an insanity that should have been incomprehensible, but I was always too skeptical to list them down for you. I always thought that, if you were aware of them, they might, one by one, become faint, dying out, and leaving me with nothing to linger on while I sat. 

Some nights, while I waited, I would steady my knees out within the remaining inches and line the blemishes - the touch you’d left behind to rest with me, while I waited. It’s strange, the things I could associate to your marks, how I would flinch to the contact of some and know exactly the shirt I peeled from your flesh just moments before it was left. The bruises were marked with quite an accuracy (two ribs down). God, what the neighbours must have thought of the soundtrack to my apartment. It took a car alarm a block back, an abrupt bark, the stuttering of a street light… to introduce me to the street’s breath I once again mistook for your own.

I’d wait for you to come home, and once you stepped onto 8th, I would watch and count the number of steps you took until you were positioned between my ankles. I knew all too well what each range would mean when you bustled through the door and left my mind to anticipate the rest.