Maybe You're The Axis (And I'm The Dying Earth)
Sometimes, you look at me and I see galaxies
of the words you don't say,
like they're caught in your breath, your lungs, and they can't escape.
I can't escape either, you know.
Sometimes,
I see stars exploding into nebulae
and I feel myself flying apart right along with them.
Sometimes,
I see oceans crashing over cliffsides
and I feel my heart copying the motion.
Sometimes,
I just see you.
.
You stretch like a cat in the sun and I watch your tan skin glide
over smooth muscles I so long to touch,
like a temptation, a test, and I know I'm going to fail.
I feel
like a dying star, a rising tide, a horse galloping without a herd.
And it's funny because I know,
I know,
you can't feel the way my heart
beats and thumps and grinds to stops
every time
your eyes and mine lock across the room.
.
The words echo in the right half of my brain,
sirens sounding that I wish I hadn't heard.
The left tells me
Stop.
Don't you know what it'd do?
But the words, they're like nails on chalkboards
scratching at my tongue and
I want so bad to spit them out, I love you, but I know,
I know,
it would make your galaxies implode.
Tiny tears in the fabrics of your planets, peeking at the other side
where it's dark, not a light in the sky, and I don't want to see that,
I don't,
but maybe there's a part of me that really does.
Maybe there's a part of me that's hoping wild, desperate
that your skies will be the same shade of blue as my eyes.
.
Sometimes, you look at me and I see galaxies.
There's words in them you don't say
because they're trapped on your tongue
and you can't escape if you try.
Sometimes,
I see beatbeatthump like the pounding of a drum.
Sometimes,
I see wild horses rampaging through the ocean and I feel
like I'm cliff-diving off the edge.
Sometimes,
I just see you.
And this, I think,
is true in every way I can't seem to bring myself to say.
These days I feel
like the whole planet is against me,
laughing in my face as I scribble through my goals.
Tell Magnus, one says.
It disappears in a cloud of red.
Stop, is the next.
This one, I trace in gold to counter
the silver lightning cracked across my wrists.
Re-start, I read.
Blue eyes shoot to a dust-soaked guitar,
withering away in the unlit corner. Black pen
scratches white paper.
I breathe.
Another year, I think,
another left to fear.
.
I don't write them for next year,
though I have the notepad there.
It feels too sad, too reminiscent
of everything I've always known I won't achieve.
No goals, no failures,
sounds so much simpler to me.
No chance of letdowns, lost dreams,
and maybe this time, I won't feel my seams tear apart.
.
You knock, ringing and clear,
confident in everything you've ever thought to do.
I think
of not answering, like you'll go away if I don't,
but I miss your colour too much to deny myself
the sight.
Door open, you step inside, and I'm sure you'll say
I look like I've already died and maybe this time
I'll tell you the truth that I have.
This time, you don't.
One look, I know.
This isn't the you who paints with the sun or basks in living
wild moment to wild moment.
.
"Alec," you say,
as if I don't know my own name.
My heart
stops, thuds, thunders, beats.
The world
spins, races, falls from beneath my feet.
There's more in your eyes, conversations
I don't know how to have. I look,
but all I see is lightning
and red pen.
.
"Magnus," I reply,
your name so much more meaningful than mine.
Galaxies, stars collide, the world tips over onto its side.
I know you see the lightning, too.
Red pen across my heart and
black breaths into the dark, skies
ripping to shreds and music still stuck in my head.
You've always seen it, haven't you?
.
Gold-green drip waterfalls of silent
screams, echoing through the soundless room.
I want so bad to tell you, truths sparking at my tongue,
but there's iron bars pierced through my lips and I
can't wrestle them open.
Your breaths sound like a burning galaxy and maybe
the words aren't sparking at my tongue,
but my eyes and maybe
you can read them plain as day because
I love you,
and if you can't you'll never know.
I'm drowning,
and if you can't I'm going to let go.
.
You breathe and the water
crashes away from my shores. I'm left
sputtering in the sand,
choking for breath, trying to spew out the poison
in my lungs.
I don't know what to say,
you've always spoken for the both of us and maybe
that's the problem.
My words are in your throat and I can't
take them back.
I want them back.
I don't know what to say.
.
"What's going on?" you demand.
The question is a noose in the air between us
for me to either hang myself with
or pull myself up.
I don't know how to hold on tight enough.
I don't have the strength
to lift myself
or the will
to wrap it round my neck.
These days, I'm so tired every step feels like
a marathon.
I wonder if you notice, but your eyes are made of magnifying glass
and I know that you do.
.
"Nothing."
Nothing is going on, I tell you.
It burns through my tongue,
a poison more vicious than the water
in my lungs.
I know you don't believe me because I
am a canvas
and you know how to paint.
Because I
am made of red pen and lightning
and you know how to read.
.
You've asked me not to lie to you many times before.
This time, it is not a question. It is
an accusation.
This, it says, is the part where you must choose
to either tell the truth
or bury the dagger in your heart and twist until you bleed
to death.
The truth is an ocean, vast and uncertain,
and I do not want to be crushed
when the water hits the rocks.
.
I'm sorry, I try to say with my eyes.
I'm not sure what for.
I'm not sorry
for loving you, you are the constellations
that spill across my navy skies.
I'm not sorry
for hating myself, I am the springboard
for others to propel themselves off of.
I'm not sorry
for the lightning, it is the road map
to show me where I've been.
.
Maybe I'm just sorry because I know
you don't understand,
you can't.
And I wish you heard the horses
crashing through the tide.
.
"Talk to me," you say and I want to scream
I am!
but you can't see the cliff-side
I'm perched upon.
So instead I say, "I can't,"
and it's the closest I've ever come
to the truth.
.
My name feels too much like a promise from your mouth
and I don't want to break it.
But the way you're looking at me is too much
like I'm the painting you tore apart
just last week.
I don't want to be the wrong colours, wrong shapes, or
the wrong sets of brush strokes,
that make you scream in frustration because you
can't get it right.
I don't want to be the painting you
can't stand to look at.
.
The birds in my sky swoop towards the ground,
a suicide dive,
and I lean up to grasp your lapels because I want
to shake you into understanding
everything my voice takes for silence.
I also want to kiss you, but my lips
are made of lightning, too, and I
don't want to burn you.
Instead,
I feel the waterfalls moving
from your eyes to mine and it stings
where they scorch right through my skin.
.
I don't say anything.
Maybe that says enough.
.
You're looking at me like the sun looks at the moon,
careful, longing, desperate.
I want to tell you to look harder,
to love me,
but I don't think that would be fair.
.
And then the ocean crashes right onto the cliffs
and the wild horses drown.
The sky is torn to shreds
and I can see the hidden dark.
.
You're closer than you've ever been,
except when we were drunk that time
that we don't talk about.
There's a breath between us that I want
to inhale,
but instead you do it for me.
.
A plea on your lips, not sure what for,
and your stars in my galaxy as the wall over my heart
rips to pieces of thin shredded paper,
fluttering down around us like silver-gold snow.
You know,
it looks a lot like the lightning, too.
We've never been good at the word thing.
And it's funny because
I always thought you were the best at it.
I thought you took both our words and
shoved them down your throat and
spewed them out at perfect times just because you could.
Now I know you spew out thorns
and hold the roses in your heart.
.
Neither of us know the words we don't say
and it leaves us choking
on silence.
I almost want to kiss you again,
just so I can take your air where I
can't find my own.
I almost want to strangle you,
just so we can stop breathing
together.
Silence is a monster,
taloned with wings that stretch high above its vicious head,
stalking towards us with dreaded velocity.
.
Hours stretch into days like a cat rising from its slumber
and my door ends up closing with a click.
Yours stays open, like you're hoping I'll come in
and tell you everything I didn't then.
Mine is a barrier to ward you away
because I don't want you
to tell me you don't want me.
.
Your friends ask why they don't see me,
if maybe I'm not home.
I hear you tell them I'm tired, I'm resting, I'm studying.
They're not lies.
I'm tired
of doors between us and things we don't talk about
like getting drunk and hooking up or when you came into my room and kissed me.
I'm resting
between moments like those where the horses drown
because they need time to learn to breath again before the noose comes back.
I'm studying
everything I've ever known about you
trying to find answers to questions I have no idea how to ask.
Do you like me?
Do you love me?
Am I just a warm body with a mind formed of frostbite?
Do you even know me at all?
.
The questions are anchors
they drag me
deeper into the poisonous water and closer to you
all at once.
I'm not sure
whether to cut the ropes and swim to shore
or let them pull me down.
In some ways,
I think it might be harder just to drown.
.
"Magnus," I say,
your room stretches around us like the one in that game
where its door won't open
until I've completed my task.
Eyes like wild grass on a sunny day,
you look at me and I feel
like maybe drowning was the better idea.
It's too late to tie the rope back together now, though,
I'd have to swim all the way
to the bottom just
to grab the other end.
.
"Do you hate me?"
.
You blink
like I've just asked something shocking.
I don't think it's shocking.
I think it's fair.
How could I have ever thought you loved me
when I can't even love myself?
It's logical, true, and the left side of my brain affirms this.
The right one screams,
Idiot!
but I ignore it.
.
"How―" the words get stuck,
bile in your throat you can't swallow down.
I know the feeling.
"How could you think that?"
and I watch your hands flutter as you rise off the bed
like they're butterflies searching for landing
or answers looking for questions.
.
How could I not? I want to say,
but I think
that would upset the butterflies.
Instead, I say,
"Why shouldn't I?" and try to make it angry.
I don't like angry enough to be good at it, though,
so it ends up sounding like rain
dripping through a window.
.
There are a thousand reasons screaming in your eyes
and I want you to say every one of them.
Instead, you say,
"Oh, Alec," and it comes out kind of sad.
I wonder if it's the purple
on my shoulder
or the pink
on my wrist.
.
Boiling lava spills into my heart and I almost spew it out,
a volcano of hurt feelings and frustration,
but I don't like angry
so I swallow it down even though
it burns at my throat.
I don't like the rain pounding at my eyes, either,
so I close them to keep it away,
shutting the windows to stop it
from dripping into my home.
.
I'm waiting for you to say it.
I know you know the words.
It's a song we've both had stuck inside
our heads for so long the lyrics
have invaded even our dreams.
Only we're both too unsure of our voices
to ever belt them out loud.
This time, though,
I can see the words fluttering through your butterfly hands
and I don't know what to do
to coax them from your grip.
.
This time I'm the one pleading,
not sure what for.
Maybe for you to just pull the trigger already,
the gun's been pressed to my temple long enough,
and kill me so we can be done with all of this.
Or maybe just kill me so I can be dead.
Or maybe I'm pleading for you
to bring your stars
back to my galaxy.
The skies have been so empty without them.
.
"I―" you say.
Almost, but not.
The birds are swooping to the ground again,
another suicide dive,
and I'm not sure you'll be able to stop them
this time.
Screams on my lips and sobs in my heart,
I want to stab the truth through your chest
and force it out your throat.
.
"I love you."
.
My laugh is like the arc,
full of howling animals gone insane.
Your swallow is like the ocean,
washing it away.
.
"I love you, too."
I think it's funny how this time
when your stars crash into my galaxies,
they don't rip anything
to shreds.
Everything is black and red.
The sky is black,
the bricks are red.
They're dressed in black,
I'm stained with red.
The ground is black,
my blood is red.
.
My screams are no colour at all.
They are silent,
unheard,
and stab knives into my head.
My sobs have no colour, either.
They are silent,
unheard,
and burn holes through my body.
.
Breathing is forgettable.
I didn't know that until now.
Nightmares are real.
I didn't know that, either.