My mouth opened to speak—words
          clung to the tip of my tongue,
praying to be released and capture the moment,
   but your mouth denied such pleasure,
enticed my body with different sensations,
           strangled my tongue so what I said was impossible
to decipher. Just a purr vibrating the back of my throat,
                   a moan captured in the chest,
       light-headed, throbbing of the temples, to the point of calling it a migraine.


I'm sick. My mother even told me so.
     As I counted down the days of the months,
the hours of the days, the minutes of the hours,
                 until the numbers became too complex,
too high, and the impossibility of our touching
       became so large that I began to feel suffocated.
Is it really that long? Or could it be possible I'm just terrible at
                    third grade math.

Always possible seeing as I was daydreaming
         of holding hands and skipping through weeds,
and making crowns out of dandelions and calling myself
                  sunshinin' princess of love, wishing to be saved,
taken away, held in the arms of somebody until high school rolled around
       and hormones drove boys to sex and girls to anorexia
And I didn't shine but hid in the corner instead.


You succeeded at making me breathless, of boiling the blood,
        until the ache has overtaken the want and turned it into a need,
so if I don't get my fix, I'll fall to the floor,
             dig my nails into the hardwood, crawling to the bathroom,
and claim this is the end, the end of the world!
                  I can imagine you laughing—your eyes alight with my pain
knowing you were the one who caused it
                                 and the only one who could fix it.


I'll beg you to cure me—to take away this agony,
        this breathlessness, yet heavy breathing....
this prison, yet I've never felt so free before,
                   and I'll scream that you did this to me,
you're the cruelest thing that has ever happened to me,
        and you'll smile—I know you will!
                      And whisper, “darling, welcome to love.”


                                           And I'll hate you for it.
                                                          But I love you, too.