when you bit down and swallowed me whole
i tasted my own blood in scarlet auroras and
wilted petals on a fresh-picked rose
laid in the lap of a young girl
who loves to dance.
she can breathe freely here but not on the other
cotton candy clouds she sees across the
starlit path she’ll never be able to walk.
the air tastes sweet enough to forget
if she was born on mars, maybe she’d never have to breathe at all.
i am her as much as i am the ocean she crawled out of
and you are the reason i am blue.
my trees grow tall and wise enough to curl just enough for her
to fit her hand in firmly and swing
from branch to branch
in perfect amity.
we waltz together a
round the sun weighed down by
the clinking of asteroids slung brazenly across my waist
trailing behind beams of light that burn through the
thin skin of her eyelids.
when she’s blinked away stars and inky black fog
you reflect it right back to me where old scars
burn and hiss
and i am left with the celestial bruise your knuckles
dragged across my cheek,
and across hers,
black and blue.