• Vol. 08
  • Chapter 02
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garnet: I knew the moment I met you

All my evening spent sepia, and then you took five steps on some garnet earth. Choosing so wholly your own body you pressed your fingers above my eyes. A touch of salt and sweat and waves, the kind that are stillborn.

The same prayer in the set of your mouth. You were wearing white and I said don't bring more white into the room. I said baby. With tenderness. And watched like inkblot how a night could go blue. Staining the surface. Holding to be held.

You told me you don't take shit and it's good. Crumplemouthed shittalker shittaker, is how you put it when I asked: is the machine going to break? You were out of quarters. Prowling at the hindsight of me: seeing for one moment, unseeing the next.

The dream I tuck underneath my upper lip and under my lower one, too, and in those sharp edges of my molars and in eaglewing of my collar is to know you. Be kept still by it. Riveting. Take a spin around the back alley, and tell me what you see.

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