You Don't Love Me

This is my mantra as I fall up the hill.
You don't love me, though I spent a sleepless night wrapped in your arms, and you wrapped me up, and you wrapped me up.
but you don't love me, and so I fall up the hill, and it's so steep tonight, and your back was so broad, like spanning continents.

and you wrapped me up, you wrapped me up and cut me loose, and only a very foolish girl would let you anywhere near her blood red, throbbing heart.

And I fall up the hill in December, and my heels catch on cracks, and there are jeers from the peanut gallery and I will meet their gaze . And as I fall up the hill, I am falling back into and under your fingertips and you can't have me and I can't have you, so at an impasse, I pour all of my sweet, succulant desire into words and my sheets will swallow me and I shall be warmed, and the flanks that were so warmly cool in your embrace reach for the far side of my empty bed.

Because you are not ever going to love me, and I am never going to love you back, but fool that I am, I will let your beard burn my cheek, I will seek you in the dark and disappear into your hand, carry your scent on the back of my hand, covet you in the recess of my office, lay you down in my dreams flank to flank, but because I don't love you and because you don't love me I will stumble in my heels and sleep like the dead.

But maybe if things were otherwise, maybe if we blew up the dam, or if you could feel, fuck, if I could feel, maybe I might fly to you, maybe your arms would be open. Maybe I might get lost in the expanse of your torso, maybe you might get lost in my skin, maybe somewhere between lips and tongue and rhythm maybe there is a space, maybe there is a space.

though I doubt it.

And because you do not love me, and because I do not love you I perfumed my sheets for my benefit and the candles shall remain unlit.