In the shadowed hour,
you sit with a cigarette’s ember
dying between your fingers,
watching me unravel like silk
one thread at a time,
until the cold air bites my bare soul.
Your gaze is a scalpel,
a surgeon of agony,
and I am your patient,
willing, trembling under
the weight of your silent commands.
“Stay,” you say without speaking.
I cannot leave—
you’ve sown roots inside me,
thorned and thick,
twisting through the dark soil
of my ribs.
Your kiss is like a wound.
Your lips carve deep,
feeding on the salt of my surrender.
I taste the blood in the spaces
between our breaths,
and I cannot decide
if it is mine or yours.
It doesn’t matter.
We are both bleeding now.
I tell you I trust you
as you press a knife
to the softest part of my mind.
You laugh, low and sharp,
and carve my fears into poetry,
each word a bruise I’ll cradle later,
longing for the pain
only your voice can ignite.
I beg you to love me
with your teeth,
to consume me like a drug, but you only graze,
only tease,
only starve me enough
to keep me begging.
I want the hunger.
I want the ache
that you so carefully craft.
And yet, in the quiet moments,
your touch is a hymn, a vesper I cannot refuse.
You pull me close,
fingers trailing the fragile glass
of my soul.
“I would never break you,”
you whisper,
and I believe you
as you shatter me again.
We are each other’s addiction,
each other’s ruin.
In the ruins, we bloom.
In the ashes, we grow.
A garden of thorns and fire,
rooted in the exquisite agony
we call love.