I start packing, zip up the body bag. I tell myself it’s two meaningless days gone by, that I’ve lost nothing.

Your touch breaks my skin and pieces chip off onto your fingertips. You kiss me like I’m your oxygen, when I’m only a vegetable. I feel what I’m supposed to feel- the burning, the ache, the cum between my legs.

I leave forty-eight of my hours piled high in your driveway. My shoulders lug what I pack away to make room for you, but I couldn’t care less if you stay.

If I keep myself small, there’s nothing left to mourn.

I bathe in sandalwood to keep you all over me. I beg for your weight, giving your limbs permission to crush my limbs without having to settle for dreams of phantom bodies on top of me. I ache. To be kissed. Fingertips, matches on my skin. Your touch, sage to my negative mind.

I’ve been resurrected. I dance on walls, and forbidden fruit hangs in haunted bedrooms. Will I ever be a fantasy or will I wake up sweating, clinging to my own sheets?

I woke up from a dream that bare hands tore me apart, my heart ripped out of my chest, my fingers bent from pages and pages of writing, and I had no choice but to live for my art, live with my eyes buried in sleep, live broken. Wide open and vulnerable, no choice but to let the world I spent my adult life running from sink its teeth into me. I’m no longer young and green, but wrinkled and bleeding. Bleeding out every piece of life I’ve collected, ink I have no recollection of flowing in me is endlessly flowing out of me. I’m bathing in my darkness and lighting candles for my shadows.