8/12/2019 You Are Fever Dream

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you are fever dream

emily cole

my bones are yours for holding & we watch the planets collide. your naked knees bowed against my

newborn flesh. i dont trust anyone with the moon & where were you when the world collapsed? the

universe broke when i learned to love you, forbidden symmetry found in some terrible tangle of muscles

& tissue. i wore my favorite old t-shirt, cotton stained with blotted cream & coffee, you clung to me,

frenetic fingers begging for some semblance of union. we so blurred lines became invincible in our

quaking presence. we are entwined, a knotted strand of genetic material & starstuff, quoting

communist daughters poetry & commandinga listen. listen. carl sagan is my personal jesus, I tell you,

for nothing is romantic like biology. there are notches in my hips for your resting elbows, your trembling

palms, this is where you belong. young eyes cracked open wide, we are spinning into the depths ofsome luminous night, human shells shed far behind. we are divine. we are celestial. this is who we are.

8/12/2019 You Are Fever Dream

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she

emily cole

we could have been more than this, but there was no place to go. today i saw your eyes; they used to

burn brighter & my bones show through. when the words forgot their meaning, we washed them down

with coffee bitter & lonely kisses to pass the time. i lost you when they locked you away & told you not

to scream. you never were the same, but i remember. you were vanilla chai tea, run-on poetry doodled

haphazardly in precalculus, all the shades of a new england nighttime. i played quasi peter pan, flew

you far away & called you mine. we were everything & it wasnt enough. every gleaming cell of your

body was hollow with hurt. i tried to swallow your pain, but it leaked into my organs; we both

shuddered with its resonance, its residence. i stroked your electric blue fingernails & promised you

tomorrows. we bent until we broke for each other, a catastrophe of half-lit fireworks, empty skeletonsraining down on our shattering teenage love. it was no clich, but we sure felt like one. winter came in

a snowfall of memory; i danced with my demons, you bowed down to yours, devoured by their nagging

sharp teeth until you were perfect. you werent supposed to be; you, my glass ballerina, flawed with

perfection. didnt you know my doe eyes on you? by monday moonlight, we played our overture in

breathless, gasping tempo, lungs desperate for a molecule our bodies couldnt give to them. it wasnt

always, but it was always enough. we used to be forever, spooning twined with scorched august grass,

stealing away from my girlhood bedroom at every slumber party, doing our ghost thing in the dark.

then you called it over & i felt my guts all twist up in a fishermans knot. we were a secret you couldnt

bear to keep. it was illicit, lone twin stars strung out on the love beneath a daunting sky. it was

irrevocable, no hindsight going-backs or second guesses. it was infinite & so much more. it was & we

were.