Bleeding raspberries.

There was grass there, grew to where our kneecaps rested and we could see each blade like when we caught glimpses of our eyelashes that pressed against sunsets and light that glowed golden. We were still fresh, still young, and still burning. We had swallowed embers that sizzled into the hair that melted into our necks and into our backs. I have been seeing your eyes, all dark and full of mud in places where they don’t quite belong like when we found birthmarks in the bend of our knees and we were wide-eyed, surprised at the sight of them. Some days I think I might break, split in half or wake up and find that my limbs had snapped off like the twigs underneath our shoes, that my neck won’t hold my head. There are water bottles half empty and wrinkled white sheets and I’m trying to figure out where exactly it all went wrong, why you rubbed my fingers until they were bleeding raspberries, until they looked like summer afternoons just to fade behind all the dust in my pockets and under winter’s breath. Why you waited until I let the sun light up our cheekbones and uncover the shadows I kept in clenched fists. I’m turning my cold shoulders at the way the traffic lights twinkle the same way you did. Green, red, and yellow whispers in the dead of night: blinking and blazing like shivering fires. The running water still holds your gaze inside it’s droplets and I watch them until the tips of my fingers turn into raisins and the bath smells like december again. Maybe I’m still getting used to seeing you where you don’t belong, turning walls into haunted homes and draping over my eyes like cobwebs I can’t get rid of.