Now It’s Dark
by Astrid Beauvois
Every time I readjust my position on the leather of the tattered couch, the squeals of protest wake the dead.
The springs are worn out and the cushions are peeling but my skin enjoys the rough texture, it reminds me that I can still feel.
All I’ve ever wanted is to watch the sun break apart the darkness and marvel at the most hypnotizing sight I’ve ever fantasized, the glow of sunbeams kissing your cheeks and your nose and illuminating your eyes.
Your pupils constrict and tears well along the water lines above thick lashes, your face turns from me like it always does.
Promises and lies both taste the same in the dark, the entire world is sanguine and charcoal and your gaze is downcast.
We’re both two shattered pieces of pottery being unearthed from the same archaeological dig, and I feel that some of our fragments were probably switched around.
When you speak to me, I hear you so clearly that everything resonates with the deepest vibration, my legs are shaking and I’m left wide open.
You claim that you’re a novelty, biding your time until the shine wears through and only fingerprints remain upon your exterior, wishing they were placed upon your soul instead.
But to me you were never that, and you never would be, because I understand what it’s like to be that exciting stepping stone on the way to a different river.
I am a pickaxe and you’re a diamond that’s not yet been shaped and cut and polished to it’s true splendor.
The raw power held within you is earth shattering, as I feel the shockwaves rock the soles of my feet and I scramble for purchase against the mountain I’ve been climbing my entire life.
My mouth, a siren calling sailors to bathe with me upon the shores of an eternity completely made up of pain, deceit, and worry.
Home is found within another’s heart and the blood runs red, and black, and courses through every fold of skin because it’s wet here.
It’s warm and welcoming and I beckon you to enter me, to let me envelope you and heal your wounds by wrapping you in a tourniquet of lips below belts that never become unbuckled.
It’s warm inside this house I’ve built for you from the bones I’ve broken within myself while searching for a square peg to fill the round holes I pushed through my ribcage, into the organ that keeps the cold machine I conduct moving.
I splay my legs open as your thunder rumbles through my throat and I cry out to the skies above me for time to stand still, for this very moment to be embossed upon the filmstrip I’ll replay in my mind before I sleep, if I sleep, to allow me to fucking sleep.
Because your voice is a cool breeze, a warm hand running fingertips electric up and down my vertebrae while I tremble, a lillie in a windstorm, torn from it’s stem.
I’ve never been what I’ve wanted and I’ve never been what anyone desired but when you speak to me, I listen.
Through ice sleeting against the sides of this shack I have haphazardly constructed for you, I hear the soft rustle of your lips over iceburgs.
It’s warm within this house I’ve built for you, but the walls are unadorned and it all feels so damned impersonal but there’s a fire set at the hearth and eternal soup to warm our bellies.
Because it’s warm within this secret alcove I’ve carved from my own subservience.
It’s warm, and while I drift lustfully to sleep as I watch a thousand sunsets and sunrises cycle across the bridge of your nose, I place an ear to your chest and count your breath because we never know how much time the world has left for us.
And the banquet I bare to you is there for the taking, because it’s warm within the home I wish to share with you, it’s so warm inside this fire I’ve been dampening for my entire lifetime.
If there’s anything here for you take away as you live your life in a place I have no way to follow you through, it’s that I promise you it’s warm here; it’s warm here and I listen.
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