There is a face in there, I'm certain. In the melted ooze of fog and wonderment, and the distinct smell of something dark burning that sticks to your clothes like burrs. Here, right here, there is a blinking eye, a welcoming ear, the wet, open mouth soaked in word of salvation. Relax your eyes. Brain scrambling to pull these features together. Here is the thorn crown in 3D; I reach out and feel the blood between my fingers. The European face easing together, the dim colors barely dry. I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my soul.
Hello, dear one, I know you are not sinister, but instead you cower at the sounds of excitement. Your soft, loose hair is slipping into white and your eyes become chalky and hard. I love the way you nurture me with a shaking hand. I love the way that you never leave me alone and dependent on myself. The taste of black coffee and burnt popcorn linger after your sloppy kiss. You are never tidy, your breathing clutters the room, your small whimpers are damp and mold in my ears. Your hands stain everything they touch and they reach for so much. But I love how you can memorize my number so quickly. And how you wait up for me all night, ready to spend each day with me and never hear a goddamn word that I say.
Just circles and circles; shapes on shapes, folding into spiraled D.N.A. As thick as blood, as small as knees under pressure, under this weight. Cartilage snapping at the ground, unearthing bones that once protected your soul. It wasn't my skin, my hair that swept away the wind you were breathing. It wasn't a name or apology embedded in the crust, rusting at its core. I wish the words I had said to you weren't worn down to their shadow. Something had to matter between us. Maybe in these teeth, this face that's been pounded down by layers of skin, or the kaleidoscope grins beneath all my labored breathing. Maybe knees while they're breaking, molting the blood and slipping past the bone. Maybe that's what will be fluttering in the eons to come, in another person's footsteps.