GAYLETTER

Tangled in my sheets and lying on your back, I watch you turn to greet the soft light of a sun that has just begun to rise. Your body is still asleep, but your mind is so awake. I keep a box of photos by my bedside, relics of the ancient civilizations of me, Incarnations of self like all of the cities I’ve set fire to — and I show them to you sparingly. Photos of the life I lived before you, back when I had bruised lips and hips and knees that knocked when I walked. Back when everything in my life was a habitual as breathing. And I have never been too easily satiated. Things that take a little with others seem to take a lot with me. I’ve spent the formative years of my youth wondering why nobody told me growing up would be so hard. A master at placing the blame, I’ve been running in circles and howling at a starless sky.

 
I’m spending the final years of my youth wondering why nobody told me falling in love could be so easy. An amateur at real feelings, I am breaking down my walls and my thick skin, howling at the moon in Texas. I am far from that person now. Rolling over in the morning, twisting in my slutty white sheets, I pull you closer and I am far nearer to the person I could be.

 
That magic, it’s a head rush. It’s a high that the drugs can’t match. A dream of elsewhere, I can feel it in my bones and my heart. It’s a lot like happiness. It’s a lot like hope. It reminds me of the last glowing ember of yet another city in the dust at the end of summer. Hot winds and habitual hauntings. A sixteen-hour dream state that breeds a new kind of fire. It’s one of those things you can feel but can’t see. Like wind. Like love. Like ghosts.