Heavy On The Tongue

I put pen to paper like how you put your lips on her skin—slow and reverent. Making her blush in a way I’ll never get to taste. Where the desire lingers in both of your eyes. The ink hesitates where I do. It pools in the broken crevices, in the pauses where your name almost forms but never arrives. A fleeting ghost. You linger more in memory than in life. I imagined the warmth of you, not as something I had or created, but as something I circled endlessly. However, you circled her. She was in your orbit. She existed in the spaces I couldn’t reach, in the ease of your hands and in the certainty of your gaze. I wanted the closeness, the heat, the slow unravelling of being known by another woman who sees you and chooses to stay. I want to consume, to press my mouth against yours and gorge on your essence. To linger without the instinct of pulling away. The thing I cannot name makes it known, a black pit formed inside of me. Instead of tasting you. I taste my distaste, and it’s heavy on the tongue. I am full of longing, resentment and empty permission. Ink cannot ache the same way skin does. It’s the only way I know how to touch you now. 

And this is the place where I draw the line.