first light

do push-ups, eat pounds of chicken and rice when you’re not hungry but not lovesick, and gag over the toilet when the love-sickness hits know that you won’t always feel this way about the shape of their mouth— that it won’t always be the perfect crossbow in your dreams

you are Becoming— wanting everything fists balled up around your sweaty sheets after every nightmare comes stark relief remembering an afternoon where you came unglued for a moment but they— they have you tethered, and you are unhinged it has been years since you tasted obsession like this

the curtains in sunlight are crisp the sweatpants you borrowed, snug on your soft thighs— growing harder from running through the forest every time you are consumed by that indescribable hunger

their name becomes a sigil, sharp edges coalesce and blur into the radical softness of their calloused hands as they tattoo ink into your thigh, a reminder. their jaw could cut ice but their voice is the sun-drenched dapple of golden hour and you wonder what it would be like to get lost this way again.