A man with careful words moving at the pace of old forests.

Warmth is a kind of language

Spoken underneath black leather jackets

With frozen hands on his ribcage.

Trembling, like a struck match

As you pull my knees apart.

The fire is already lit.

Slow-burning for months

Beneath stage lights and long, lingering looks.

I am inevitably in love with him.

Like the coastline surrenders to the storm.

I am haunted, like the walls that watched us draw closer.

Under white linen and tableside lamps.

The castle held its dead while he kissed life into me.

The space between shaking breath and being completely consumed.

Like moss reclaiming stone.

Water gathers inside the empty chapel the way heat rises between us.

Not all at once.

Then all at once.

A patient kind of violence.

He resurrects every starving thing in me I have buried.

Like wedding bands and the look in my mother’s eyes.

Beneath years of teaching my body how not to ache.