I Long To Be Chained

I could taste the regret on your liquor-stained lips

Pricked by the thorns of the forest you rushed through

To pick me up, peel me off the muddy ground, and resurrect me.

It was sweet, a sidelong taste of a victory we wouldn't find.

Not in the brambles, not in the dead branches of winter.

The day was too sober for that, too lost in our sorrow.

This was a slice that I could savour, that I could cling to

Before my crypt was hollowed out and emptied of my soul.

.

The sun had just begun thinking about rising, hadn't it?

Long rays of foggy pink spread damp arms through the forest,

Weaving between oaks, aspens, and the birches with their eyes

Which saw you hovering over me, tears gathered on your steep cheeks.

This was the opposite of what you dreamt of for our tangled magic.

It was the fear gathering in the dark corners of the night,

Plaguing your sleeping hours with terrors so abhorrent

You woke coated in sweat, screaming as though someone died.

.

My neck was the one balanced on the razor's edge and you knew it.

Why else would those opalescent tears trail down your hooked nose?

Even caught like this in the rose-coloured hue of morning

There was a shadow obscuring the light in your black eyes.

I could not brush it away, could not kiss it better, couldn't kill it.

You knew what sort of twisted, agonising fate awaited us.

The knowledge was a crippling thing to you, a veil that eclipsed

Any bit of desire or dreams that may have lit your soul.

.

What a horrible thing, to be fated to be right about your grief.

That morning though, caught between the retreating tendrils of fog

And the cage your palms made out of your forearms beside my head,

I could not tell that your despair was an ominous thing.

There was only the recurrent sorrow of your features making you look

Thin, tired, and desperately in need of a break from it all.

What was there to do but believe I could steal it away with a press of lips?

You clung to me, black clothes pressed against colour, and kissed me hard.

.

Dew wet your elbows and heat radiated off your long, slender form.

It wrapped long arms around me like you did, cradling me in warmth.

The air was so cold in comparison, so cosmically empty laid next to you.

I can still taste the chocolate on your tongue and the shooting-star dream

Of curling up next to me by a fire while the world fell into its deep slumber.

You kissed me harder in a way that made me think the world would end.

I was foolish enough to believe it was because of your own burning desire,

Not the impending doom of the universe cleaving us apart.

.

This was the last of our untainted tender moments,

The last pretty morning bathed in pastels and fog and the smell of winter.

If I had known that the last had arrived, I would have clung to you better.

I would have pressed my soul into yours and begged the cosmos

To find it in its heart to chain us together so that I would never lose

This feeling of warm fullness spreading its phoenix wings in my chest.

The air changed, shifted colder and crueler, and I never noticed.

But the tears you cried fell to my lips and I should have tasted the doom.

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A/N Part of a longer series I'm working on turning into a collection. Check out the rest below!

Smoke In His Teeth

Bleeding Petals

The Tether

Strings of Night

Obsidian Water

The Cottage Window

Nighttime Pastime