I’m the sort of lover that would strip you bare of your thoughts. For I never taste. I only consume. I’d stretch them, make them spread across your entire body so that I could read you like braille. I’d decode that pretty mystery, so that when our flesh would finally meet, we’d communicate like reunited telephone wires. Our currents would be electric and you would feel the pulse of my demand in every radial wave of my palm against your curves. You don’t believe me, do you? I’d pull you into me and we’d dissolve like butter melting upon a hot stove. I’m not inclined to be so passive about it. I am also an angry lover, you know. My rage burns with razor sharp intensity. I have no qualms about making you mine, putting you in the safety of my claws. I would hold you so fervently, like a seat belt fastened tightly around your breasts. This is what it means to have the world in the palm of my hand, to possess with a collar of fingers, wrapped tightly around your neck. There’s a fine line between passion and danger. I prefer to keep it that way. Perhaps this is why I am such a terrible lover, after all.

I told you to hold the string when we tied our lines together. I was so busy weaving, constructing our intricate rope where I carefully knit our lives, our future. I thought I was making patterns never seen, never felt, never kissed. I looked at you and I saw the moon. I watched with loving eyes as it exploded into shades that covered and shadowed your features like tiny freckles glowing as the stars in our eyes. Maybe we were too starry eyed. Perhaps these freckles were really flecks of our own disease. They make me wish I could be better. I wish I could write better prose and better songs that would make your lips dance. I wish I could make you laugh over a bowl of fruit, ripe like the love that once blossomed in our hearts. I wish I could tell you how it feels, to be the artist carving his affection into a heart made from marbled stone, this broken down and undeserving vessel. I wish we weren’t so tied that our lungs cramped and struggled with the cloud of thought, forgetting how to breathe. It turns out we’re just a pair of young necks fastened against a loving noose.

Maybe we should unravel.

Maybe I deserve better, maybe I don’t.

I am holding this swell in my lungs, for just a breath of you. Enter in, come anew. Set me aflame like a brilliant flare in this indigo sky. I am undone, unraveled - twisted and tangled with your name tickled on the cusp of my tongue. I was in waiting. I reached out with open arms to taste your serum, and instead I swallowed an ocean. I sank deep and twirled with these turnings of tides. Though you were a gentle lover, you tossed me with a violent caress. I have been holding this swell in my lungs ever since.

Low lights and soft words, I wanted to paint a canvas down your spine. We were warm, gentle curves and lines spiraling in affectionate strokes. It was in this abode, these shadows, that I made a masterpiece in your eyes, watching the rolls of tongues and sighs beat in harmonic exhalation. Hush. These whispers will dot our lines – those precious beauty marks. It is in the pockets of our scars where we become lost, traveling along the x-marks-the-spot. It only takes one gasp, and there is home in you. Lush lips meshing hot like painted lace. I sweat and whisper a word I hardly understand, but you wait still. You wait for me to come, and we walk through these doors anew.

I don’t even know the girl I’ve been writing about these days. Whose portrait was I trying to paint anyway?