Wings

I only fell in love once. It was thrilling. 

I met him for the first time in a dark room 

underwater. 

The walls were rippling,

cigarette smoke hung in the air 

like fog.

His silhouette constricted my pupils, 

reminding my brain

that there was more than my nerves,

reminded my body to breathe. 

But I choked away from his murky voice

and when I rose from the deep the next morning

I had regarded him as a 

fabrication. 

I met him again in a back alley

exchanging 

in a handshake

and he asked my name. 

His shadow caught me dangling on the edge 

of a mirror

powdered and wide-eyed.

He told me to share

so I told him my story wrapped in

a fumbled cigarette burning too 

fast

He took a drag, he breathed me in

then put the ember out

on my arm. 

He told me to shut up. So I did.

He told me he liked my voice.

He told me he liked my skin 

and my veins. 

I said he'd been in a dream

and he asked me 

where I thought we were. 

He had wings covering his shoulders blades,

sleek like oil gushing from his spine

toxic and contagious

they were soft under my fingers.

I would watch them ripple when he slept

his skin rolling, waves of muscles

responding to the gravity of my body,

curving canyons for shadows to bloom. 

The feathers would curl and snake

down, twisting around 

the knobs in his spine.

When we were together, he'd wrap me 

in an embrace

that left us in space, 

dark and unbearably

hot. 

His tongue was sharp

cutting promises into my skin 

but his kisses were more passionate

than his eyes. 

He told me he loved me

with his hands around my neck

and when I woke up

I regarded him as

a lover. 

He didn't regard me at all. 

And then he told me he was

sorry

with a gun to his temple

and his eyes over my head

I said it back

and kissed him but his wings 

were too thick, spreading, 

reaching. 

I left him in a dark room 

six feet

underground. 

He found my skin playing with bowls and straws, 

but I wasn't there anymore. 

He stretched it out

and climbed inside, filling me

with blood and 

toxins

that awakened my nerves. 

When I woke up, his fingers were spiders

running up my legs 

and through my hair.

His smile was sharp 

like the center of a crystal, 

casting shadows and rainbows across my eyes. 

I regarded him as an angel. 

When he let me out of my feathered 

cage

I told him again

and he said it back,

a mockingbird.

But his mind was dark, the ink

in his veins had burst. 

It sunk into my skin when he 

licked me, brushed me

black and blue.

He could cry oil, 

thicker than his

empathy.

If I woke up, I didn't recognize him. 

I regarded him as 

a monster

and watched a boy

with bloody bare shoulders 

walk away. 

When I woke up, I was alone

shrouded in his wings

and memory.