King of Iron Hearts

My soul scrawled in script for you to decipher.

The first time I read a book

I found I had hooks in my heart

Where the words could hang

And ornament my soul.

I am a hoarder of language. A gorger of verbosity.

“Look at her,” I whisper.

“Look at the way she breaths like a tsunami pulling a tidal range of energy in through her parted lips.”

“Look at the way she moves like her muscles are tied to the rhythm of a song only she can discern.”

“Look at the way she reads a book with her finger resting on the page like a cartographer mapping new lands.”

“Look at her,” I whisper. “Is it any wonder I stare?”

I was an old book

None one picked up at the library

To spread their fingers over my pages and

Absorb my words

I was almost forgotten

A dead language like Latin

Until the girl with the glasses

Who dreamt of days long past

Pulled me out of the dust

Cracked open my spine

And exposed my pages to her light

I read novels

To live life

While I waited for more

I struck my hands between the books

On the shelf at the library

And waited

For someone

To take it in theirs

To make with me

A life more beautiful

Than the strangest fiction

Fit to me

Made for me

Bone of my bone

Broken

Lost or freed

You are a state of mine

Eternal

Bone

Of my

Bone

That first kiss was a promise

Sealed in the petal pink wax of your lips

That my mouth

Would be yours until

Our very last kiss

Dreams shine like pearls in her eyes.

I become an artist, a collector; stringing salt water gems on necklaces

That she may wear around her throat.

A secret in her smile

Tucked in a rosy furl

I want to pull it out with my teeth

Soothe the paper cut with my tongue

Dip in the well of her blood and write

My own secret on her lips

So that every time she speaks

Every lick of those lips

And drag of breath through her mouth

She feels me

Her tongue scraps the scar of my secret on

The inside of her pout

And she can’t deny the truth of it

Of me

Of us

I’ve branded her with it

She’s mine

I pressed a kiss to the center of a rose

It twisted

Unfurled

Dew in its folds

Sweet on my lips

Cool against my tongue

I suck at the fragile bloom

And feel like

God

As it blossoms under my touch

Her amber eyes trapped every tragedy of her past in the dark flecks and inconsistent whorls of brighter gold. I knew if I took my time, I could read her story in them as eloquently as hearing it from her lips.

She was too much heaven

And I everything hell

We met clandestinely

At the kiss of dawn

And the death of day

It was forbidden to connect

Because together we would have made

A heaven of hell

And a hell of heaven

And where is the sense in that?

There are no rules in love.

She was gorgeous

Like the edge of a sharp blade in the light

Striking as a flint against rock

As deadly to my heart

As an arrow tipped in poison punctured through

My chest

I woke up to the sight of you

Dawn sluiced across your skin like gold

And for the first time

In a long time

The dream of you was not a nightmare

Because my reality matched the fantasy

I found love when I was eight

Pressed petals the colour of blood

Hidden between the pages

Of a book I was too young to read

Again,

At that awkward time

When my voice lacked depth

Then suddenly

Fell to the bottom of a well

That signaled maturity and I thought

“Finally, I am old enough to love.”

But by fifteen, I had seen only wraiths,

Lust like brass when I would have gold

Infatuation thin as gauze and just as easily torn

At eighteen,

My half-formed soul felt fallow

My dreams withered to husks and tumble weeds

I was old enough for first love, they said

But my heart yearned for that and more

They couldn’t have known what would happen

That same year

When I saw you across a parking lot

How my heart would age a decade with each beat

And the hollow cage of my chest would be at once so filled

In a second, I was found.

Too young, too old, too every single thing at once

Because with you I was made and unmade

Everything was possible because of you

Yet nothing was necessary

Because my ten-year journey

For the other half of my soul

Was done.

And that was all I ever wanted.

Your voice is between the lines, my queen

Echoed in the white before the black

It is the swell of words that rest

Behind the apex of my throat

Your scent is caught between my teeth

Sinks among the grooves there and gives them taste

Of clouds

Dew upon my palate

I hide you under my tongue

Your body walks my lines at night

It warms the skin beneath my arms

Settles against my chest

A thumb in the hollow of my collarbone

It whispers your breath into mine

Your heart rests in the gaps

Between my ribs

It sits and breathes my breath

It webs the links between my toes

And when I swim, my queen, it is on you I float

She was sun-warmed

The skin behind her ear like ripe summer fruit

A peach split open on wet grass