Walking Sick
We started to lose our young, touchy memories early and slowly
It started with trying to remember how we held hands an hour ago,
Did we tangle our fingers together or put one set of digits over the other like a pile of clothes?
Trying to get that same feeling we can’t prove ever existed while looking into red eyes
There was a tangle of dissolving noodles at the bottom of the cherry pit of our hearts
No matter how much cyanide scientists and friends told us we contained
We continued to bite at each other hoping we'd get the full taste of each other’s fruit just from the skin
You can not mix honey into venom, the sweet will float at the top like a baby in a pool.
We cannot be cuddly cobras, we cannot kiss without nipping each other with our front teeth.
We start every single day looking at each other under the blanket like we want to pick away each other’s sores
Forgetting that we tried to poison each other last night for a reason.
You elected to sleep on the couch,
Then a couple hours later you wandered aimlessly into bed, swinging the door open like you were running from a fire.
Your silk pajamas were clean,
But your chin,
Your chin,
You had massaged your toothbrush bristles into your gums until they bled out of your mouth and onto the skin on your face,
because you were “eager to see me”.
We woke up that same night
Our bed became a pool covered in leaves and lilypads, chlorine got in our eyes
I screamed but you laughed.
Then the next day I asked you to teach me how to swim,
And you laughed again.
We got our towels, I helped you pick out your trunks
We jumped in, I was nervous like it was the first time, holding onto you like you were the last pole that could protect me from getting swept up in the winds.
When you saw me underwater you lunged at me in my most vulnerable state
I woke up and we started biting each other again
We started screaming at each other again
Acting surprised every single time
We forgot how we got to our point B but kept walking to point C like we understood
You forgot our anniversary
I forgot what turned you off
You forgot my birthday
I forgot where you wanted us to meet for dinner
You forgot about the texture of my surface but remembered my pressure points
Like you needed to press on them to survive.
I remembered you were living in a swamp and mosquitos flew around your head everywhere you swam like disciples
You treated me like a menace but thought the bugs were innocent because you forgot about malaria, about the suckling
If our love was a disease, it’d keep returning no matter the amount of radiation and mountain high pill regimens stacked against us
If our love was a disease, a skin searing epidemic would kill half our town because we were too careless to contain our issues
If our love was a disease, I would have died by now
If our love was a disease, the CDC would shove a pike through me and burn my body on a grill
and I would become a plus one for the death toll
If our love was a disease, you would wash your hands with boiling water after cutting pork
even though you are terminally a walking sick.