please don't die

1/2

the boy tastes like half a milk moon strung upside down over a river. an interesting comparison, but he's so sweet it burns her tongue and weighs her sticky throat down to her glitter pink toes until her stomach is swooping down into vast depths. when he's gone, out the door and into the gritty blue world, she slices all her vinyls into perfect halves and ties them to the ceiling with ribbons of his old sweatshirt she'd discovered in the fireplace, caked with ash and dried salt from tears. hanging above her head, empty grooves and swaying back and forth to no music except the whistling of the bitter wind, her half moon boy is born again and again. and in other places too: in half of a cookie she doesn't want to eat, half of an apple cut neatly, half of a moon rising above the cold world, halves and halves. you never know how nice being whole is until you're sliced clean through and laid out to rest.