The Bed We Borrow

 

The Bed We Borrow
You come to me like a thief in the afternoon light,
your hands already knowing the map of my ribs,
the soft cave under my breast where the heart knocks
like a prisoner begging parole.
I open for you, thighs parting like old curtains,
dusty with the years I've spent pretending
this is not hunger, this is not sin. Your mouth is a small furnace on my throat,
sucking the pulse until it bruises violet,
a love-bite shaped like tomorrow's regret.
We couple like animals who have forgotten mercy—
I arch, you drive, the mattress groans
under our borrowed weight,
the sheets twisted into ropes
that could bind or strangle. I taste salt on your shoulder,
your sweat, my tears, the metallic tang
of what we pretend is passion
but is really the body crying out
before the blade falls.
You call me beautiful and I laugh,
a short, cracked sound,
because beauty is just skin stretched tight
over the bones that will outlast us both. After, we lie like spoons in a drawer,
your breath hot on my neck,
my fingers tracing the scar on your wrist
where you once tried to leave early.
I want to say Stay,
but the word sticks like a pill in my throat.
Instead I whisper,
"Don't go back to her yet.
Let me keep this small fire a little longer." But you will go.
You always go.
And I will wash the smell of you from my sheets,
scrub the evidence from my thighs,
and wait again in the cold house
for the next afternoon thief
who thinks he can fill the hole
you carved and left open. Love, darling, is a cough we can't hide—
small at first, then ragged,
until the lungs give out
and we are left gasping
in the ruins of what we dared to call ours.