Enchantress

You arrive like the first word of a language I didn't know I was born to speak— the way you bite your thumbnail when you're lying, how your keys jangle three times before you find the right one. That Tuesday morning glance splits me clean: before you, after you. * Your laugh tastes like the last cigarette I never smoked— bitter and necessary, the kind of harm I'd choose twice. I follow your perfume through morning streets— vanilla-cedar, the scent you wear like armor— until I'm standing outside your apartment, realizing I don't know your last name. * In my dreams, I have courage. In my dreams, I knock. But I wake to this: your coffee cup abandoned on my counter, lipstick stain like a signature I can't decode. * Today I saw you with someone else. Her fingers laced through yours like they belonged there, like they'd been there all along. Your laugh in the distance, then her hand on your chest— the world tilted. I stood there watching until a stranger asked if I was lost. Yes, I said. Yes, I am. The world tilted. I bit my tongue until it bled, walked home tasting iron and the salt of my own stupidity. * If you came to my door now, you'd find only the hollow where hunger carved out my name. But I keep inhaling the ache, this fool who called the echo a promise, who confused wanting you with deserving you. Tonight I'll practice saying your name like it's just another word for Tuesday.