honey and sugar.

I woke with eyes made of clouds, cotton candy pink, peeling back against the yellow creeping in through the blinds and pouring over window sills. My dreams made noises I thought only existed in nightmares, in quiet corners, behind doors with broken hinges we thought we had locked. You slept in my lashes, slipped inside the spaces between my teeth and I listened to the songs my wrists would make to ignore hearing you. In my sleep, the corners of your mouth taste like honey but we know that isn’t true. We know the moon likes to turn your eyes into fireflies and coat your lips with sugar. And when the howling fades and hides behind dawn, our skin grows cold. Our whispers come out in heavy sighs, damp like they had been dipped in the ocean and pulled back out again. You had words floating out of your mouth like glass, ready to rip me apart, to turn my skin into loose strings. In the morning, you had your hands on my milk thighs, counting each bruise with the tips of your fingers. You told me how good it felt to have your palms on my bones and your nails in my spine. I told you how much better it would feel with my hands around your neck.