The Deadest Kind of Closeness
There is more warmth here
Curled beneath
The sickly, flickering halo
Of the streetlamp outside your house
Than I ever managed
To pull
From your skin
The heavy, reckless snow
Tangling in my eyelashes
Melts softer than your voice ever did
Evaporating with every blink
Until I can feel the stinging flush of blood
Creeping back into my face
A reluctant reminder
Of what a pulse
Is actually supposed to feel like
You were colder
Than the unmade mattress
On my side of the bed
You slept huddled up
Safe and cocooned
Like your mother still tucked you in
While my goosebumps
Became permanent fixtures
In the draft
“You should see him in my dreams,”
I confessed to your ceiling
In the hollow hours that chewed me alive
While my fingers traced
The little black curl
At the nape of your neck
“One touch of him
In that faded
Band shirt
Was like a swarm
Of manic butterflies
Diving headfirst into electric barbed wire”
But really an intimacy
Flatlining
Into rigor mortis
An ache so violently heavy
It calcified against my ribs
Like the residue of gin and bad decisions
So was it me?
Was I just a rough draft
Of someone else you wanted?
Did the quiet crush you enough
To play house
Only to want to lock the front door?
Did you just
Want to sleepwalk
through my lifetime?
Now I know
why your ceiling
never said anything back
But hey, at least it’s warmer here
Copyright © Ali Lynn | Year Posted 2026
|