These Gilded Words

Hiraeth

Bedroom

ⅰ︎) You swaddled the sun in your fingers, soft light slipped through the cracks in your palm and tingled my skin like hot coffee and coaxed me awake from sleeps' gentle rivers. Wrapped in Apollo's grasp, your pillowy words tear and cotton tumbled from them, and they caressed my warm-wrapped skin through the maze of limbs and blankets and pulled me into the comfort of your chest. The distant radio churned in the atmosphere, static lyrics seeped into our skin like rain and turned us into a song only sang by the gentle heartbeats in our chests.

ii) Over time the our lyrics of unspoken words and shattered promises spool like yarn down our throats, gripping our hearts and depriving it of calmative closure. Our heartbeats were no longer the rhythm to a melody but a curse instead.

Kitchen

i) My hand settled on your skin like the soft clink of a dish settling on the table. I loved to trace the geography on your sides and listen to the gradual crescendo of your laughter; I memorized the recipe of your joy and wore them around my fingers like mittens. Every batch homemade and tasted of the sweetest ambrosia; it kept the love inside this place immortal.

ii) Then we slowly brought store bought anger into our home, letting our emotions steep like a tea bag in the soap suds that carry the broken dishes of our love.

Living Room

i) Our thread-worn fingers trace the scars of our leather hearts. The harsh sunlight of hardships have ripped the surface, but we've knitted them back together with loving lilacs and turned the seats of our hearts into vases. Our TV used to drown your honeydew eyes in the undertow of its kaleidoscopic colors and created a ladder into the window of your soul. I always thought of you as ethereal and it was your compassion that kept you human or maybe the most divine thing you could do is show love.

ii) I now wonder how the hearth of our ardor burned itself into the ashes of antipathy. We weren't like the paintings that hung on the walls anymore, the dull colors of mundanity painting our background and the bright pigments of our passion outlining our bodies. The ghost of our longing walks these halls and I wish I was strong enough to let go of the past to move on.