ode to keats

"Make love to me as if you're breathing poetry."
He was a boy who had read Keats for school, but she was a girl who breathed Keats to butterflies. Her smell was of a leaf freshly thorn, and her skin, so soft and white, like the sound of the word lily. He whispered "lily" to himself late at night, and shook with the need to take her. When she was anxious, her breath came in short gasps; it made her breasts shiver, and he'd multiply his words to comfort her, because he didn't want to quiet the quiver of her breasts too soon. Her eyes scared him. They were too soft, too soft, and she cried tears so beautiful they made him want to hurt her. He pressed his thumbs against her skin, forever finding new places to remember as his favorite. Her skin bruised easily, but he scarcely ever left thumbprints. He wanted to tear her apart. She didn't leave the first night they met, but slept curled beside him, not touching him. Her dreams slipped into his, so that he awoke in a haze of pink dusk and powdered faces. He couldn't shake off the haze for days, and when she slept beside him a second time, the haze never fully left. The first night they made love, she took him to the woods and told him to listen to the trees as she stared into the moon. She took his hands in hers, whispering about the trees, the trees, as she guided his hands to slip her out of her clothes. Then she was naked in the moonlight, but she stripped him of his skin, slid atop him, and froze him in time, although all he wanted was to take her. He broke flower petals in his hands on sunny days, ripping with dead eyes, but the smell of freshly broken petals always stopped him, froze his breath, made him remember her lips whispering Keats to the butterflies. Once he shouted Keats over the mountains, threw a book of Sappho into the sea, and read Poe as he'd read a eulogy. But she always chose those days to tuck her head under his chin and breathe poetry into his skin.
He wanted to take her, to see tears stain her cheeks. But her tears were the milky way, and they froze on her face, stopping time and space as he lost himself in the heavens spread like rain across her skin. Soft like the sound of lily. He pressed his thumbs against her breasts, trailed to trace her hips, thumbs fluttering soft like butterflies. And she broke, crying, her face wet with tears, so he lost himself in her, drowning in the depths of space. Questions without words filled his skin. He pressed his arms against her breasts, elbows in her waist, stretched her arms above her head, held her, watching as the light slid down her skin. His breath left pools of heat puddled on her skin. She burned, and he was lost, remembering rose dusk, Keats whispered to butterflies, and tears of the milky way.
"You're beautiful," he whispered in her ear. And his words spoke the truth.

gaps for the universe to leak through

He hasn't responded, and I imagine him building a boat to the moon. I don't know where he is or what he's doing, only that an hour ago he was telling me how much he missed my voice and my hands in his hair. I miss his hair, which is soft and gold like the stars. I imagine him in an ark high in the sky, sailing along the milky way. His hair will be ruffled with the wind--they say there's no breeze in space, that a man's footprint stays etched on the moon for forever, or that a flag remains frozen mid-air for eternity--but I know that space is forever in motion. Nebula breathe in and out, pulsating against spinning stars and infinitely expanding dimensions. Space is a never-ending dream, and his boat is another spiraling star in the swath of the universe.

He'll land on the moon quickly enough, because he's strong and brave. He'll call to me from atop a sandy crater, his words whistling through space and time to reach my ear--I miss you, please come to me. And I will; I'll take a running leap into the sea, finding a spinning sky instead of icy waves. From the moon will spin a rope of golden thread, and I'll grab for it, holding tightly as he pulls me to him. I'll see his figure, he'll grow closer, his hair shinning among the stars. There's his boat! It's beautiful, made of wood from the deepest forests of the Earth, with gaps between the boards to let the universe leak in. The masts spiral away into infinity and the crow's nest is buried far away in distant nebula. I ache to climb the ropes and peer out over the whole universe.

He's built a boat to the moon, and he's going to call for me soon. I miss you, he'll say, please come to me. And I'll take a running leap into the sea, spin into the sky, and he'll pull me to the moon.

I miss you.

Sometimes I forget to remember you. I'll be putting on my left boot, and the thought will strike me that you're out there, maybe putting on your shoe too. Sometimes it's less difficult to forget. Something--a dinosaur, Rammstein--will remind me of you so strongly that my chest hurts and I feel sick. I miss you in these moments more than when I missed you all the time.

Be well, and don't feel bad if you forget to remember me too.