Shy Spine Steps

You owed me the hands of the clock and you owed me my breath. You knew the steps of my spine, and you filled the crevices of my lungs. I was hallow so I inhaled deeper, even as my breath fogged up the glass. It was winter when you appeared, one more time from across the world, and your smile and your laugh and the rising of red in your neck was the summer before. I spilt my cup of choco down the drain as your laugh came cascading down my heart, and like a knock on hard mahogany you hacked that part of me and talked away my darkest dreams, whispered them away from my heavy lids. You distracted me from the television show at twilight and in lieu showed me our garden. You hopped down from the sheets and attacked me across the room, tickling my frown away and kissing a bashful smile in sight.

We nailed postcards of your words on my map. And we reinvented the world and dove into stories and memories till midnight took place and your funny snort came punctuating your laugh, and there came my laugh. I almost forgot about it. I gulped at how atrocious it was. Your face was of stone, but it was not stony—it was still and afloat. Your palms were of warmth, but I began to pay more attention to the cold through the allowance we gave the window. Our room was a cavern. I blinked dust off my lashes. You breathed like the lonely streets, but it was not like that because your eyes were twinkling like the vast ocean, keeping aquatic animals of days and nights—just like that summer again. And I liked you first. Then loved you, because you didn't stop me. And now I think you were peculiar. We were clauses and question marks. I hunted for explanations, for deep, more reasonable essays—because you were that, a winning essayist; you became your letters. But what I received was a simmering kiss under the gaze of the watchful moon. I shivered as my fingers scrambled for warmth—they were so skinny and white—so I shut the damn window and relinquished my cowardice, and then you swore it was my courage that you loved most about me. You were brimming with humor. You iced me with words I couldn't take so openly. You garbed me in them, and you shrinked my crevices into stitched patches. Your hands mapped the dark behind my ribs away. You were a hushed tone as I became a rising flush of red. Unfettered you made me as you let me grow wings.

You pulled down my lids at night when they were bright with nightmares. You brought them open the next morning when they were bright with dreams and happiness. Your whispers did well, and your stitches excellent. Your arms were open and your eyes were an experience. I hope I did funny things to your chest too, and I wish your heart still stupidly and superfluously roars when you think of me—like me you.