Page 8 of King of Iron Hearts
My soul scrawled in script for you to decipher.
The first time I read a book
I found I had hooks in my heart
Where the words could hang
And ornament my soul.
I am a hoarder of language. A gorger of verbosity.
“Look at her,” I whisper.
“Look at the way she breaths like a tsunami pulling a tidal range of energy in through her parted lips.”
“Look at the way she moves like her muscles are tied to the rhythm of a song only she can discern.”
“Look at the way she reads a book with her finger resting on the page like a cartographer mapping new lands.”
“Look at her,” I whisper. “Is it any wonder I stare?”
I was an old book
None one picked up at the library
To spread their fingers over my pages and
Absorb my words
I was almost forgotten
A dead language like Latin
Until the girl with the glasses
Who dreamt of days long past
Pulled me out of the dust
Cracked open my spine
And exposed my pages to her light
I read novels
To live life
While I waited for more
I struck my hands between the books
On the shelf at the library
And waited
For someone
To take it in theirs
To make with me
A life more beautiful
Than the strangest fiction
Fit to me
Made for me
Bone of my bone
Broken
Lost or freed
You are a state of mine
Eternal
Bone
Of my
Bone
That first kiss was a promise
Sealed in the petal pink wax of your lips
That my mouth
Would be yours until
Our very last kiss
Dreams shine like pearls in her eyes.
I become an artist, a collector; stringing salt water gems on necklaces
That she may wear around her throat.
A secret in her smile
Tucked in a rosy furl
I want to pull it out with my teeth
Soothe the paper cut with my tongue
Dip in the well of her blood and write
My own secret on her lips
So that every time she speaks
Every lick of those lips
And drag of breath through her mouth
She feels me
Her tongue scraps the scar of my secret on
The inside of her pout
And she can’t deny the truth of it
Of me
Of us
I’ve branded her with it
She’s mine
I pressed a kiss to the center of a rose
It twisted
Unfurled
Dew in its folds
Sweet on my lips
Cool against my tongue
I suck at the fragile bloom
And feel like
God
As it blossoms under my touch
Her amber eyes trapped every tragedy of her past in the dark flecks and inconsistent whorls of brighter gold. I knew if I took my time, I could read her story in them as eloquently as hearing it from her lips.
She was too much heaven
And I everything hell
We met clandestinely
At the kiss of dawn
And the death of day
It was forbidden to connect
Because together we would have made
A heaven of hell
And a hell of heaven
And where is the sense in that?
There are no rules in love.
She was gorgeous
Like the edge of a sharp blade in the light
Striking as a flint against rock
As deadly to my heart
As an arrow tipped in poison punctured through
My chest
I woke up to the sight of you
Dawn sluiced across your skin like gold
And for the first time
In a long time
The dream of you was not a nightmare
Because my reality matched the fantasy
I found love when I was eight
Pressed petals the colour of blood
Hidden between the pages
Of a book I was too young to read
Again,
At that awkward time
When my voice lacked depth
Then suddenly
Fell to the bottom of a well
That signaled maturity and I thought
“Finally, I am old enough to love.”
But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,
Lust like brass when I would have gold
Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn
At eighteen,
My half-formed soul felt fallow
My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds
I was old enough for first love, they said
But my heart yearned for that and more
They couldn’t have known what would happen
That same year
When I saw you across a parking lot
How my heart would age a decade with each beat
And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled
In a second, I was found.
Too young, too old, too every single thing at once
Because with you I was made and unmade
Everything was possible because of you
Yet nothing was necessary
Because my ten-year journey
For the other half of my soul
Was done.
And that was all I ever wanted.
Your voice is between the lines, my queen
Echoed in the white before the black
It is the swell of words that rest
Behind the apex of my throat
Your scent is caught between my teeth
Sinks among the grooves there and gives them taste
Of clouds
Dew upon my palate
I hide you under my tongue
Your body walks my lines at night
It warms the skin beneath my arms
Settles against my chest
A thumb in the hollow of my collarbone
It whispers your breath into mine
Your heart rests in the gaps
Between my ribs
It sits and breathes my breath
It webs the links between my toes
And when I swim, my queen, it is on you I float
She was sun-warmed
The skin behind her ear like ripe summer fruit
A peach split open on wet grass
