here if you need me i wake to lick the lips of rancid envelopes carrying letters i will never send to you, letters stained with tea leaves and thc and the salt of my bitterness, the salt from my hair, the salt of your skin. i stood on the sea wall staring out at the mountains looming across the georgia strait, letting the waves lick me like a lover and brine my heart. smoked, salted and preserved for you to open like a jar and sample, to taste the sour tang of me, a change of pace from the sugar and spice you are so used to. i'm hard worn by the breaking waves, the ocean gradually crumbling away the hardest parts of me so that maybe just this once i can feel alright about the way i see you whenever i close my eyes so vividly that i smell the acrid tang of your skin and i can feel you kissing me, your hands in the small of my back, even though that never really happened. i'll imagine you here standing on the jagged wall reaching out to the sea, with your back to the ocean and your lips on my neck, the wind and the waves thrusting us into the concrete to break us down into smaller pieces than we already are. the fragments of you and me will scatter once again to the wind and sea and be lost beyond the mountains, but i will still dream of you there, feeling the shreds of your heart with my tender fingers and trying to think of ways to pull you back together. the way you ache echoes over mountains and across the strait, a vicious wind that rocks the waves and tears at my clothes, dragging my ghost across the water to hold you where you are alone. i'm the smoke from your cigarette hanging luminous in the lamplight outside your house, licking your lungs to release you temporarily from the anchor of your body, fragmented and free. |