the space above my ears.

With a Corpse's Indifference

I open my eyes and I'm entertaining.

It's bright, the lights are hot, and I don't know how I got here.

The host of the operation asks a ridiculous question and everyone laughs, like a mix of jingles and chimes and car horns.

I look rather stupid here, lips parted, eyes in some kind of confused daze.

"For you, I would" I say without thinking.

They laugh harder.

They think it's a joke, I realize.

I laugh too but it sounds like metal on metal, poison to my own ears.

They don't know you, I remember too late.

They don't know the cookie batter evenings, driving out the cigarette stench with that of chocolate chips.

Music that's just loud enough, the love bites on your inner thighs.

That one time you couldn't even walk up the stairs and I had to pretend I wasn't laughing at you but you noticed anyway and smiled in embarrassment.

I thought you were ethereal, those rosy, freckled cheeks.

I'm not sure what you thought of me.

The words you might have used.

Me, feeling you.

Me, looking you dead in the eyes.

Me, telling you what an enigma you are, but without any words.

What color was my smile?

How broken did I seem?

Did you ever feel as if you were wrapped in angel wings?

Touched by an out-of-body peace, so still and holy, surrounding you and filling you and becoming you until all you know is

Love

And me.

I felt it once.

It changed me.

However, this is a different chapter.

One where I keep on starting things, starting sentences, but they keep ending in the last two syllables of your name.

I bubble wrap you, bubble wrap the things about you I haven't forgotten yet.

I ignore the scent of rotting apple cores in my backseat just so I can glance over my shoulder before every journey and see the shimmer of your lipgloss smudged on the decaying crimson for a day longer.

It's been many moons coming; this is my first time really writing it.

You can hear crickets now.

One of the cameramen clears his throat and it sounds like an avalanche.

They're waiting for me to answer.

"Repeat the question" I request, but everyone is shaking their heads.

Silence.

More silence.

"Just make something up."

I can't do that, it would tip the balance.

The apology I've been rehearsing is fresh in my mind, so I pick that and pretend I'm telling it to you.

I introduce myself by describing my morality, how it consists of two categories.

There are things I anticipate to believe in, and there are things I'm excited to believe in, I explain.

I have proclamations I can't wait for everyone to hear and so many potential dreams.

As lovely as that seems, a very broken part of me is scared of it.

Not scared of you,

Not scared for you, even.

I'm scared of the unspoken and unconfirmed disappointment I may feel if you don't happen to fit the vague, yet cruelly specific mold I have carved out for you.

I'm not scared to or of love.

I'm scared I don't have it in me.

That I've fought all I can fight.

And it's ridiculous, I know because I've pulled myself back together many times.

I've been in love before, I know I have.

There's this still, small whisper, though.

There are these filaments of a question floating around disembodied in the air asking;

"What if that was the last time?"

I can't hear anything over that question.

Maybe I've already spent all my good karma.

It was so easy.

I never had it easy.

I flinch when the phone rings.

I'm always checking over my shoulder to make sure all my counterparts are still there.

Those portraits of eyeless entities always tracing my footsteps, so that I'm in chains, but I don't ever have to be alone.

The counterparts that make up the crowd before me, awaiting the day I put two and two together.

The day of rest.