plethora

the night we held our hearts in our hands

i. 

it's two in the morning and my back is against the wall and my mouth is against the transmitter of a phone. the skin beneath my shirt is cold. the person on the end of the other line is the boy who hurt me, the boy i still love. i'm telling him why i love him. my mouth is an open faucet. it's clumsy, it remembers the moments before my first kiss and it's clumsy, tripping and stumbling over metaphors about his hands and fragments of poems about his laugh. i tell him about how he hurt me. he tells me how he doesn't want to do that again. how he wants to kiss me. 

ii. 

miles away, in a room full of swaying bodies and sweat, a girl sips fire. she has the lips of someone else moving against hers and the name of another boy in her mouth. she wants to tell him that she's still thinking about him. instead, she fills her lungs with sweet smoke hoping that one day, he'll be nothing but fog. 

iii. 

in two rooms separated by distance, there are two people wondering what it would be like to touch each other. they dream about the feeling of skin against skin, their mouths and bodies melded together in a way that makes their breath hitch and their hearts race. they imagine the sensation of sighing their names into each other like that. like warm air being gently blown into cold palms. 

iv. 

 somewhere else, two boys who have known each other for years stand on the precipice of something that could be love. they are going down a road. they talk about this, about that, about them. they stop the car so that they could touch. 

v. 

it's three in the morning and i'm in the kitchen spooning some ice cream into my mouth. my back is against the kitchen counter where he kissed me. i'm thinking about the feel of his thumbs digging into the hollow of my hips, where the bone just protrudes slightly from my skin. i am hoping that he won't hurt me. i am thinking about how our hearts are like fruits. they are soft skin, hard rind, tangy zest, bruised flesh, and creamy meat. sometimes the hands we place them in throw them against the wall and cradle them afterward, saying that they didn't mean it. sometimes nails puncture flesh, tear at the rind, and teeth ravage the meat inside. they leave it, half-consumed, to rot. and other times, the hands offer fruit of their own. carefully, gently, they give when they receive. 

vi. 

it is three in the morning and i am thinking of the stories revolving around love being found, love being lost, and loving still.