Crushing Me

The fire flickers like tender licks on your skin, and I try to remember to look away.

I try not to linger on your pink lips, or how your smile forms. I try to avoid staring into your eyes, darkened by night, but bright with something innocent and innocuous.

I think I say something right, because you laugh and it sticks like honeycomb to my teeth. I wonder how I can draw more out. How long I can prod and twist the same joke to make you giggle, a hiccup of joy in my constant dark. But you say you know my tells before I’m about to say something that’ll make you jump. Because I look away, and I smile, and I never met someone who can read me so quickly. Can unwind my spindling idiocy to find the truth.

I can’t stop the smile forming on my own face when you tell me I’m good- like being praised by a teacher when you were overcasted by a system of derelicts.

I want to hold you and never let anything bad get you, when you tell me something that shouldn’t have ever happened to you. It makes something ugly slither into my stomach and sit like a bloated slug, but I try to abate it by knowing you’re safe now. Because I’m near, and I can protect you. I can’t imagine hurting you, even as I know I’m acting like an unneeded guard at vigil.

I try to draw my attention away when I know I’m staring too long. Staring with such open adoration, I’m surprised you can’t see it. My eyes want to follow you. Want to memorize every emotion that make up your portraiture. Want to linger, and touch the pulse in your wrist like it may convince me an angel walks among us.

I pick at the table around the fire, and it only further flushes my blush. I glance the warmth in your cheeks, a smattering of colour, and I can’t look away. It sits above your jaw, warm and inviting. You tell me you’re cold and I brush your hands and arms, and you are ever so soft. I’d let you siphon every drop of warmth from me if it helped soothe the chill for even a moment. If it would make you feel comfortable.

You say my name, and oh, I’ve never heard it like that. Like an utterance of a prayer, or a riff in a melody. I’ve never thought my name pretty. But you make it sound poetic, nearly, in every flickering syllable, all strung together in the palms on your face when I say something that frightens you.

I want to lean closer. I don’t. I force my body to position away from you just so I don’t do something stupid like brush wayward gold from your azure turned cornflower eyes.

When I’m home, the heaven I experienced is bereft and I’m left trembling cold, though I know I run hot. I’m shaky and weak, and it must be a side effect from leaving your side.

I want to know everything and anything and it’s never enough. I want to drink from your mind like a well of knowledge.

You tell me with a particular glint I can’t place that im not bad. That I can’t fool you. I may be a tortured artist, but I am good, too.

I look at the fire, and wonder if it knows how lucky it is to kiss your smooth skin. To brush your freckles, and freely embrace you.