isn’t it curious how your fingers fit perfectly between each of my sclerous ribs, or how your breath mimics mine with belated accuracy

                         (count each breath and you’ll run out of fingers.)

don’t you remember the fairytales?

                           (and they both lived happily ever after, until after ran out and the monogamy became as non-existent as  the magic.)

you were never one for myths. with discerning eyes, you’d plant kisses along the ridges of my back
across my shoulders
and the hollow beneath my jaw, questioning my pastel skin and every involuntary blink.

“I am not a myth.” I’d breathe.

Even when my back wore naught but jutting wing bones, a street of spine and a field of freckles -bare of feathers- you weren’t religious enough to use the A word. But behind closed eyelids and incoherent sleep-talk, you were thinking it.

gesticulating to your chest you said “you’re in my heart” and your blood composed amongst your cheekbones deliriously.
but the x-rays showed nothing of the sort.

                         (maybe they mixed yours up with another’s, doctors do these things you know. I’ve never been very fond of the second-hand air and recycled smiles)

you tell me everyone dies, but you can never prove it.
                         (you’ll never die, God loves you too much- I can tell.)

sometimes when you sleep I talk to you. one day you spoke back.
among a disarray of incoherency and lullabied whimpers was repose.
that’s when I realised the hardest part of sleeping is waking up.