i still read too much flb i want you like unpolished rose quartz, amethyst with crystals sharp enough to jab your eyes out. i want chipped nail polish and blue lipstick, beards fashioned out of glitter, dramatic eyes, spikes sewn into every piece of fabric like the colors on a poison dart frog, warning everyone away. i want to know that there is poetry written on your skin beneath all that self-defense, i want you to let me read it. i want the roughness of your skin, the places where acne left scars, the imperfections in your irises, all of your body hair. i want the metal looping through your face, the colors bleeding through all of your cells and rising to the surface to show off the art that pulses in your bloodstream, the thousand different shades your hair has been or will ever be. i want the beads in your braids, the slow lope of your wide frame, the long curve from the base of your neck to the top of your thighs. i want your entire spine. there is a wanting that is like sex and the possession of souls, and then there is a wanting like a need for certain things to exist, to know that something can be real, whether you can touch it or not. i want you like i want faeries to be real or the dust from all our ashes to become glitter we rub into our skin or to hold the scale from a mermaid�s tale in my hand. i want you like i want to destroy the idea that anything is necessary when everything is superfluous because you will just keep living regardless of your environment, even when your body is gone. self-preservation is a myth of the species and you are the embodiment of destruction. i will claw my way into your rough edges and push my thumb into every bruise, howling like a coyote with a mix of fear and gratitude. you are the wilderness only because you defy definition, too stubborn to be known. |