You smell like cigarette smoke and, on anyone else, that would just turn me off. But you have your ways of making even the dirtiest things seem golden – the rust on your car is just a sign of your reckless life, the chipped paint on your nails just a sign of your long nights, the gravelly tones to your voice just a sign of how hard you live from day to day.

I clutch your leather coat like a lover.

But it is a part of you, accessible when you are not, when you slip out the door again, when you break my heart as easily as one drops a glass to the floor.

/

I met you the way I meet everyone in my world. You stumbled up, pre-dawn grayness against your back, dark sunglasses and a mug of coffee and you just finished fucking my roommate.

I spend hours buried under my pillow trying to keep the moans at bay.

Guess you know it didn't work.

We don't talk, not really, because what is there to say?

Pleasantries are for people who are pleasant to begin with, newspapers passed along the table and the pitter-patter of kids' feet… No, that's not who I am. That's not who you are.

And you tip down those shades, your early morning cover, study me with a smirk.

You think you've caught another girl.

I think you've got a lot to learn.

And we were both right.

/

I like the way you feel, slick skin on my palm – you cut and you wound me – and I like the way it makes me feel, lost and subsequently found – you kiss me and you claim me.

The roommate eyes us warily, her own memories on display and her own words of warning ringing in my bitten ears. Because you are sucking them and you are nibbling on them and you are pinning me to this couch – thigh between my legs and fingers digging into my hips – you are pinning me to this floor, where beers have been spilled and dirt has been tracked in, my naked back gathering splinters during this love-making.

But it isn't love we are making.

You are just killing time.

I am just falling.

/

Caught you once, looking when you should have been sleeping, dreaming when you should have been walking away… I caught you once, staring when you should have been shoving me back.

I caught you with your eyes open and I think I scared you straight.

Not in the literal way, but in that ironic way – in that not so funny way, in a way that chokes laughter and brings on drinking and careens head long into walls when I watch you slip your tongue into some red-heads mouth.

I think I found you out and you forgot to breathe and you believe I am ending your world.

And you don't come around much anymore, except when you are high or wasted, crawling up my body like a damn spider. And those webs you weave around the two of us, a cocoon of what could have been and what really is, I think you want me to fight for you just so you can fight back.

I think you ask for too much from a girl you can't even love properly.

/

You left your coat here and I can't help but see it as a part of you.

Torn in places, battered and bruised, warm even on the coldest of days – lined with the essence of you, brown eyes and chestnut waves of hair.

And I wear it when no one is around.

I wrap myself up in you.

But I'll put it down and I'll hang it up and I'll leave it here when I go.

/ / /

::END::