You and I,

We die every night
Picking apart the picture frames on your wall
Trying to help you remember the names of every face as we lay breathing.

You stand apart from me across the room, fully clothed
As you undress me with your eyes,
Every lick of hunger that haunts the bones of your cheeks and the curve of your lip–

I had always known to stand by the window
So I could feel the endlessness of the stars against my back,
Or the one between us, separating our pretenses.

At night I hear their calling, thin-lipped words trapped in wood and paint and lingerie sprawled across the floor, strands of hair in dark spaces turning and turning and turning–
Just bodies in a grave.

I never asked why you chose to bury them in your bedroom,
Or why you hang them from the wall,
Every pair of soulless eyes betraying the smile painted with teeth clenched.

Me,
I am new every moonrise, naked and shameless while your skin is still shut in behind glass
Sheets.

You hate repetition,
So I die every night for you, to be new.
I’d like to think that you die with me.

But you snap a picture with a flash of smile
And usher me out while the card is still developing,
I can practically feel wooden frames closing in, can smell the varnish so toxic.

I thought perhaps we could be friends,
But I suppose your imagination ran away with you, when your eyes lingered a little too long where they shouldn’t,
When they settled on others who shared only one thing in common with me.

So I die every night
In hopes that when I wake up I don’t hate you for who you are,
For the wall of nameless faces of your conquests.

In your room, between you and I,
I would break the window glass and hurtle myself through space,
Breathless with the wonder of stars than to be undressed by you.

I die every night hoping you die too,
The flames of our phoenix flight incinerating wood and wall and paint and lust
And then you and I, we can admire the universe together.

-Mien