Strange
It is only when you leave
at the end of the day
or slip, quietly, out the doorway,
that my body remembers it has lungs -
as if air itself had been afraid to enter
in your presence.
My breath returns reluctantly,
not all at one,
but in hesitant increments,
like something fear
creeping back into a clearing
after the forest had been fired through.
But you are the definition of love to me.
Strange.
When you are present,
I am no longer contained by myself.
It is as if invisible contact blooms everywhere at once -
not hands, exactly,
but the weight of something that will not release,
the kind of suffocation that clings to the bone.
A thin, electric pressure
threading itself through the seams of me:
wrists, ribs,
the soft hinge of my throat -
every place meant to keep me whole
learning how easily it can come apart.
There is no single point of contact -
only an insistence,
a disturbed touch
that leaves me frozen inside myself.
My hands tremble.
Then my knees begin to betray me
leading me toward collapse.
The rest follows -
not falling exactly,
just quietly loosening from itself.
My whole body rattles apart
like a cupboard full of bones,
and the shaking grows violent.
Something inside me
is clawing for a way out.
Perhaps a demon.
Perhaps your shadow
stitched somewhere into my lungs.
When it tears loose
it steals the air with it.
I fall open.
A husk.
A burnt-out house
still smelling of smoke.
You do not mean to hurt me.
I know this.
I do not see you
the way I see them.
They are wolves.
Their teeth are simple.
Their hunger is honest.
They tear,
and it is finished.
But you—
you are a dog
who knows my voice.
You sit beside me.
You wag your tail.
You rest your head in my lap
before you bite.
And that kindness—
that small warm trust—
pushes the teeth deeper
than any wolf ever could.
A pack would kill me quickly.
But you return.
You circle back
through the ruins.
You lie beside the body
you made of me after clawing me apart,
as if guarding it.
And when you leave
the air grows gentle again.
The walls stop breathing.
But somewhere inside me
your teeth remain—
small white ghosts
buried in the bone.
I have learned the shape of your damage
so well
I mistake it for home.
And I go back—
every time—
on purpose.
Strange.
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