take me to my grave

( and come down with me )

//

i.

she’s winter wrapped in coffins, sitting on the edge of the world and dangling her feet, not afraid of free falling as she flirts with death, gun in the hallow of her chest and cigarette pushed past her plump lips, watching him with sheer curiosity.

He finds himself tongue-tied, incapable of coherency, of words to describe her. She’s fire and she’s life itself, and she’s so very, very human. He should’ve seen that that was the first sign of his imminent demise, he should’ve clenched his jaw, contract his muscles and bask in the sound of his bones breaking and turn away, run as fast as he could, never look back. he didn’t, he stayed, he tortured and he loved and it’s yet to be decided whether it was his biggest mistake or his salvation.

ii.

she smells of decaying flowers, masterfully placed one upon other to make her a bed to rest in, to make her a grave in which eternity would kiss her lips every night, cradle her head to its chest and whisper promises of a blood red dawn. He’s addicted to the breath of life she exhales in his lungs, in love with the notion of destruction her every step screams, thirsty for her soul and embrace. He’s just not in a leash.

Her name he cannot pronounce, tongue refusing to come crashing on his teeth, his mouth struggling against the urge to swallow the bullets she shoots at him. he wraps his hand around her throat, pushing her further into the mattress, hoping her contour, her frame, will be burnt in them, that at night he won’t be alone, that there’s always gonna be a little piece of her with him to take around the world. The lie is always easier to devour when there’s a drop of truth. She offers him none: not her heart, not her name, not a way out of her web and he’s tragically doomed in a world where he means nothing more than a name, a number, a face in the crowd.

iii.

he’s brought to his knees, told about his mistakes, his sins, she greedily slurps on them and spits them back at him, teeth red, his veins still hanging from the spaces between her teeth and he hasn’t seen something more beautiful. She tells him of prayers, of angels and of churches, of damnation and of a pain so hard to bear, people take the dagger themselves and carve the name of their savior on their hearts before they fall limp on the ground; he’s one of them, he knows, for a shrine for her he has built in the pit of his ribcage. He opens himself, tears his flesh open, breaks his bones, breaks his wrists and his legs and allows her to curl around his life with ease, welcomes her with open arms and tries to feign ignorance when he stumbles of the fallen stones from the empire he had built on her existence.

iv.

he sees her in the crowd with faux-sadness on their faces, sees her lithely bringing a hand to her mouth to muffle the giggles, see her biting in the petals of a rose he took from his garden and washed her feet with, watches her as she shatters the last wall of the fantasy he got so caught up in. he isn’t surprised, has no reason to be, but still lies before her, head on the pavement and staring at the sky, trying to swallow the scream that rips from his throat when in his skin her heel she sinks.

She’s fire, she’s winter with nails of gold in its casket, she’s everything a muse should be and she has never been his, just as he has always been hers. He shouldn’t enjoy the tragedy of his broken self so much, and yet, he does.

//