You have a bite to your cheeks that makes me crave winter, even as fragile as I am in the cold. And God I’d love to be lifted out of my boots, arms stuck fingers stuck between my ribs, clinging onto them for warmth. And if we remember to shut the door leave the draft between our lips, let me chatter my teeth numb against your tongue and drip the flakes from my lashes, cup my jaw like you always do and let’s go back to the night we’d first met. Flannel thick, tucked against wrists thick against your skin and the rashes left across my neck, my stomach, between my thighs and coffee spilt down throughout the knit drowning my chest. And when you unwound it you’d look at me and give my hip a nudge to twirl and let your fingers drag around my waist, and I’d unbutton from the bottom up so that the heels of my palms could slope to find the coldest flesh, and eventually we were out of fabrics. We always found a way to talk back to the chill. (I always did like the way it made your breath taste.)

This would be an absolutely ideal time to be in my own little apartment okay. I just want quiet and a gentle company. And I would just keep my sleepy playlists on repeat and all of the lights off and walk around in barely an excuse for clothing and my hair knotted up and half tangled in someone else’s fingers and half in the band and half in the sheets and half sprawled across a neck with my nose buried in deep. And I’d live in bed with a sleepy body and a sleepy mind and sleepy lips and a sleepy boy next to me with sleepy hands running down my back and a sleepy taste left in my mouth and rubbing against my tongue, asleep behind my teeth. And he’ll lay his head on my bare tummy and I’ll play with his hair and maybe drift in and out of sleep and lose track of the night and treat the morning like there’s no such thing. And I’ll sit inside the window pane and let my leg dangle out against the cold bricks and watch everything get drowsy around me and the streetlights blink while the fog rolls in, and if it rains I’ll stay right where I am and let my shirt cling to my ribs and hug crookedly against my neck and water the dandelions beneath me, and I’ll sit out on that fire escape until my limbs are sleepy enough to forget what bed means and how to rest other than lying against the cold metal three flights up. And if I start to fall asleep I’ll know handsome hands when I feel them hooked under my knees, and handsome lips when they meet to my temple and murmur something they know I will barely hear. But it will be enough. And I want that voice with me that could talk me so easily beneath the covers and to lye under them with just the light of the warmth at their lips to find one another, but look towards each other regardless, sighing while the other shifts and swallowing while the other licks their lips. 

My body seems to know what yours tastes like and maybe that’s why I can’t seem to keep still in these sheets and why my lips feel so foreign to one another, as if it’s almost strange that they’ve come to meet each eachother again, so used to stumbling over yours if even the smallest of attempts. Don’t think you understand any part of Familiarity until you begin to lose all sense of yourself, until the night you cup cold water to your face and the drips running down your throat don’t bother you, when you wrap your arms around your tender little frame and stand there still beneath the water as it cools and chills and numbs because you don’t recognize the touch the feel the shape of your own body, why the third rib against your left cage isn’t abstract against the rest, while the skin under your palms mind as well be a stranger’s you had drunkenly picked up on the Subway. When you lick your pale lips and question the taste, and your legs graze together with a slight shift in bed and the weight is too delicate to be comfortable. When you cannot physically comprehend where your body has detached from theirs is what I would like to be maddened by. When I can sit in that cafe, exhausted and drenched from the ends of the hair stuck to my neck down into the boots leaving puddles beneath them, press the mug to my mouth, and taste your lips. When I’m huddling into any sort of warmth I can get from my own grasp, hurrying home to you, and the crisp wind coaxing my hair out of my face to nip at my cheeks becomes your palm against the blush, tucking loose strands against my ear. When the sunflowers and clementines is your smell in the morning. When the bite of Vodka becomes your teeth sinking into my lips, breaking skin and slurring me into your bed. 

I want something that I cannot escape. I want to be smothered, loved, and familiar. 

I am constantly on this uncomfortable and unrealistic edge between not knowing how to properly handle a situation and honestly wondering if there is a right way to handle anything at all. The thing is when I feel I feel too much and I am worried that as wonderful as it may seem as gushy and lovable and desirable and enviable as it might come across to be a girl who feels love to the amount that I do might be something that no one else could possibly handle. I used to live incessantly with intentions and expectations just waiting between my lips to pass over to anyone who’s got a cute pair to match them but lately since I’ve branched out and let myself just fucking be without needing the company of a love to talk me to sleep each night, I have found a place on my own even if it is still insanely fantasy driven, I just can’t help but to think that it may be just in my nature it may be all I am here for to pour these restless and overbearing and overwhelming and ridiculous urges to just love someone so fully that they cannot take it. So I don’t know how I will ever sit still if the love that I go after is the love that ends up driving love itself away. It is just ridiculous okay because even if I cannot say that I have someone here tucked in next to me that I love then I will have brief and fleeting relationships with every single person I pass and everything that touches to my fingers, anything that reaches my tongue. I could simple meet a dark set of eyes and for the entire night I am wrapped in a rain coat to my chin with hot chocolate in my palms, up and out late enough with hope that it may seem mysterious more than it does desperate, more than it does longing. Nothing tastes as good as kisses that you peek into. I just want to kiss some body but I don’t want to kiss just anybody and I just want to do cute things and tell myself it’s alright if it doesn’t mean a thing, but I know myself well enough to know that every inch of what’s handed to me is an opportunity to feel, and to feel more than I maybe should be able to. When is it too much? Because I don’t know. 

My eyes are closed and I’m typing this hardly awake and hardly asleep and hardly aware and hardly rational but that is okay because a lot of the times my heart is right here at my finger tips or right on the tip of my tongue and I speak on it when most of the time I shouldn’t. People don’t know how to handle tasting that sort of love with a little kiss, how can you be sure what someone’s intentions are unless you question them with your lips? The edge of the jaw, their bare throat, you have to know what to pay attention to. Because it is all in the way they move it is not about the kiss it is the placement and the raw touch that will tell you everything you have to know, don’t be such a silly girl with that melting and mushy heart of yours, save it for the day when your windows were left open though that’s such a misleading term because you always prefer them that way, and you keep your lips clenched tight and touch your toes to the rain that’s soaking the washed boards beneath them and I know you’re thinking and I know you’re standing there with ankles chest fingers numb but stop thinking for the night and don’t say those words, don’t trip over the throbbing ache in your mouth I know it’s straining I know it’s tiring, you should have long ago been in bed but it’s not such a place at all for rest without a pair of knees to kiss your own. But don’t they always tell you it’s so foolish to need anyone else. Well so what if I just nudge out that word what if I get rid of the need and keep it for when it’s needed, no, no no I am not that vulnerable girl I do not need you but I crave you that’s more fitting does that keep things light on our toes enough, is that the right amount of emotion you’re looking for? And you’re happy on your own you’ve learned and you’ve wandered and you’ve shared late nights with the moon but doesn’t it seem silly when all you can quite think about is how those deep cheek bones might look in the night’s mouth and you wonder if the night keeps it’s heart on it’s tongue just like you do and if just maybe at the right time, just maybe there is a right time to say everything that you need to. There is that awful word again. But I do not want to need you, please believe that it may be the last choice I may make from this position, eyes glued to the dripping pane, waiting and impatient and wondering and barely at my knees barely crawling laying there split open for you to pick apart, I can’t help but to notice if you notice. No, but you might. I do not want to need you but tell me what it means to need someone when you are unsure of what you need? Tell me what it means to want without knowing how or feel without control, without pause and without any interruption even tasteful, when not even the salty tang against the tip of your tongue could quiet it. It is always that sort of night where if you were wise you’d curl into bed and let your analyzing and love drive you mad, but you’ve never been that type of girl. No, you want teeth sinking into every single place that makes you drip and stain your skin and lips and sheets and bones and fingers you want a constant reminder of things that might soon need to be forgotten, but you savor what you can get. And right now the blood on your lips, whether mine or your own, is enough for me to make the wrong choice maybe for one last night. Who knows what we could become by morning.

(And I’ll leave kisses as skin maps to travel your favorite places.)

I would be somewhere where it’s raining. Where even the night can pull off looking gloomy, too dark, too cloudy. A moody night when the weather has a temper and my heart just keeps fluttering too much for it to think straight. At first I’d just like to have my raincoat with me. Dark blue, dangling down to just above my knees, big buttons crossing all the way to just beneath my chin, and a hood to swallow back my hair, even though it won’t save the drips from getting to my bangs. I want cute rain boots too. I’ll walk to where I’d like to go, just with the night’s company. The puddles can talk to me and the scuff of my boots can join in and the sloshing of the sleepy eyed drivers out at such an hour passing me can pitch in too, if they happen to be around. Then I’ll get to my little cafe. I want to be able to see it from a block away, when everything else is asleep and every window’s eyes’ are closed and the cafe is the only thing illuminated it seems for miles. That tangy, dim light. The light ding above my head to greet me. Then the night can wait outside, until of course I’m ready for it to walk me home, to tuck me back into bed. There’d be a cute dainty little waitress, the only one willing and able to work such a night shift, weary but present. I’d whisper my order to her before I sat, and I’d make my way to the very end of the cafe, against the corner window. I could let my hood fall and the ends of my hair send droplets to scurry and slide down my thighs, my fingers tingling. Waiting for the warmth. I’d get some delicious coffee, some sort of mocha or how about french vanilla. Yes I’d like that. And I’d hold it between my fingers until they blushed from the scorch of the heat and I’d stir, and I’d stir, and I’d stir, just to hear the clinks of the mug writing me a short little sonet. A love poem, even. If I could, if I really really could choose, the only company, then, that I’d ask for is a set of handsome eyes sitting on the very opposite end of the cafe, at his own round and tiny table with countless empty and body-less ones between us, the same aroma and scent clinging to his lips and skin as mine. Dark coffee to match deep set eyes, untouched and unrefined scruff to compliment a nice jaw. A brunette. A red rain jacket leading down to a wonderful pair of hands, a writers hands, a creator’s hands, passionate hands. Hands that look like they’ve touched ground. Touched someone, somewhere, something. Actually touched. Maybe a book at his table, like there’d be one tucked in the slouchy pockets of my coat. I’d like to look up, for him to do the same, to meet in the briefest of ways and know that at least then and there I belong to someone entirely, and they to me. 

And I’ll kiss above your knees when you come home in your favorite sundress, letting my lip drag across all of the blending freckles that leave your cheeks aglow, bringing the sunlight with you when the moon’s company waltzes throughout our apartment. Daylight sits across your shoulders, my finger lazily slurring across them before the teeth sunken into your plush lips grabs my attention. I caught the scent of the break. Cracked lips and wine against the roof of your mouth but I’ll only grab the sweetest, one that will make your cravings drip behind the bed of your tongue, just let me curl up there. And when your neck cranes I’ll know. Your eyes I’ll catch while they lightly roll back and your eyelids flutter, your favorite treats wafting you towards the kitchen. Our fingers trip across the light switch but decide otherwise, the counters cool touch cupping under your thighs to hold you up, it’s palms might grasp too tightly but it’s just to keep you close. I know how the night teases you. And I’ll stand between your knees if you’ll let me, the kitchen’s heated breath mingling with yours and I’ll taste the sweet against your soft flesh, nevermind the timer. Clasp your knees. Surround me. If the rain starts to trip across the windows let them drown, I’ll keep my mouth along your nape and we’ll sit beside the vacant fireplace and watch the reflections drizzling across the floorboards, sundress straps slipping across the arch. We’ll set up a blanket on the floor and I’ll wait while you shower, droplets sheer as the nightgown’s arms clung around your waist, the long v draped down the center of your chest, blushed from the singe of the water. Come and sit between my legs, I’ll kiss your ankles and your spine and I’ll brush your damp hair with my fingers until our eyes slouch along with our bodies. You can rest here against me, here with me, I’ve got you. Don’t worry, I’ve got you.

There is something about her when she first comes through the door, bidding the rumbling night adieu with the rain slipping across her navy coat, palm sized buttons to her knees as she fumbles, creating a puddle across the flushed boards of the floor. And it’s too tiring to be angry with her, already I can taste the evening on her lips, the vodka diluted by the musk of the late morning hours and the watermelon mints piled in a nest beneath her tongue. And she lets her breath exceed her pale mouth, shivering teeth, almost as if she had been tucking it back to keep it from mingling with the moon’s, a riveting lover so she’s said. Some nights when her body lacks within our sheets I worry it has whisked her off, whispered to her some sultry tale of luminescent walks with lake water to dip her toes into, swallow her to her ankles while the two ripple conversations of where they are headed next. Somehow the pooled crescents always lead her bare feet back to me, on her toes but here, nonetheless. If nothing else I can make out the ruby red of her finger tips, smoothing the hair netted across her temples, knotting around her ears, caught in her lashes. Dripping. She stands small and dripping. With purple beneath her eyes, mascara hugging the swell, her freckles rearranged with water droplets I can hear pattering to the floor, closing my eyes to the sound of her heels shuffling against the damp wood. Her shoulders flexing, pulled back by her wrists, the coat sloppily landing to the floor. The breaths leaving her lips assure me that they are her own. I hear her necklace fumbling the chest of her dress, and the draft throughout the room sends a chill when I know she’s between my knees, where she waits. My eyes closed, sunken into our couch, fabric far from parched from her body weighting with mine the night before. And she leaves the windows open to paint the room with the night’s invisible grin, every piece of lightning allowing me a look. Briefly. Fleeting. The flutter of a nervous light switch. Listening to her moving before me. Right here. Shoulders, sunken collars. Hidden. Right here. Breasts, inhaled flesh. Hidden. Right here. Waistline, the cloth falling further. Wait. Hidden. Right here. Knees. The night tints her from me again just when her dress teases the floor. The water joins my skin, she shares soft pelts with my thighs, chest, chin as she’s hovering above me, and she crawls her tiny bottom into my hands. And I grip her, vowing never to let these hours steal her from me again. And we look at one another in the still, the storm only granting bouts of her outline. Right here. Wet, thick hair clung to her neck. Gone again. Right here. Water dripping from her lower lip. Closer, now. Gone again. Right here. Goose bumps lining her skin. Stolen again. Ruby red. And then her chilled fingers are cupped against my neck, thumbs at my jaw, before my ears, after, threading up through my hair. “Right here.” And it’s too tiring to be angry with her, already I can taste the evening on her lips, the vodka diluted by the musk of the late morning hours and the watermelon mints piled in a nest beneath her tongue. Tonight, at least, she is mine.

I just want to lock you up between my ribs, to keep you stranded, exhausting all of your last breaths, thoughts, words into my flesh. Do not forget you are caged in the gentlest of places, please do not strike a wound, please do not crawl throughout my bones, and if you do wander, please do not get lost. Though, if you do, I will know where to find you. The warmth against the back of my knees. The curl around my ankle. Tucked under my tongue. 

Get comfortable.

I will know you as a draft through the room, stirring the curtains of my skirt to peek at my knees, your lips still resting just there. Briefly, surrounded. I will know you as the ink that rubs into the edge of my palm, stained like ruby lips where I can faintly, still, make out the letters of your name. I will know you as the stem of your R’s, the curve of your L’s like limbs locked around your neck, my thighs at your ears. There is no need to exchange names, I know of many ways to meet you.

I’ll be the night blanketing your moon, freckles across my sky leaving a path to watch your bare feet from stones. I’ll be the lace that clasps around your shoulder, cupping you towards me. The shirt that drowns your bones. The espresso drizzling every morning, the steam rolling beneath the door, the pelting rain warming your frame. The heat dripping your curves. I’ll be the murmurs through the open window, the orange peels staining your fingers tips, my skin beneath your nails. I’ll be the steam dancing along your lips from the cocoa, the tinge against your thighs where the mug balances. The fire escape that you give your secrets to, the cigarette parched between your lips. I’ll be the chain that drapes your chest, the locket suspended between your breasts. I’ll be the wine, the weight laying along your tongue and slurring your speech, the rim of the bottle where your lips explore my ridges. I’ll be the flour prints across your recipes, the sugar along your wrists, the vanilla against the roof of your mouth. Tasting you while you taste me all the while, I will.

I’ll be the heat clung to your neck, holding your hair salty and warm beneath your jaw. The nights breath hinting vodka and a tinge of batter from morning, the hips cornered in your palms with flour across my chest. I’ll be the page you keep when your eyes give up at night, folded over and covered among your pages. I’ll read you aloud, introduce my tongue to your teeth and finger through your scent mingling in our sheets. I’ll be the body to drown in your arms, swallow me whole. The moonlight gliding into our bedroom, curling around your limbs like smoke, illuminating you. Touching you. Asleep.

Take me to the bottom of your coffee mug, smother me in the leftover espresso cupping it’s end. Fold me in the pocket of your rain coat and pull me in to your ribs, let me sleep within the beds between them. Take me beneath the wood washed floors of your kitchen where you stumble each night, let me kiss your ankles while you devour sweets. Tuck me under your tongue and pronounce me carefully. I am fingers through your hair and bathwater to your skin,  the sweets dripping from your mouth and crawling back in each night. 

I know that the amount of love I have to give could fill every coffee mug throughout every corner and nook cafe of New York City, and that the quality of it could leave anyone’s ground shaken and their teeth rattled in their place, tongues dripping and lips dry when I’m gone. But for right now I just want to kiss cute boys. I want to sleep on stranger’s couches when I’ve drank and danced so long that my limbs just can’t find their way home. Then I want to wake up, have a silent cup with them like two old friends who share their space all the time, and be on my way for another night just the same. I want to be free. I want to be gone in every physical way but here, always here and there where I need most to be. There are enough cuties in the world for me to go years without settling down, it’s hard to even decide which train to take first, which direction to travel, which stop to stumble off at. It’s a wonderful place to be when you let yourself not give a damn besides where it’s necessary, to stop caring in all the right places to bring you to the best that have yet to dirty your bare feet. Well my soles are aching, my heart is locked up and wrapped and wrapped again tightly and I assure you no one will be getting anywhere close. I have no idea where I’m headed, but I do know that it is somewhere, and there will be drinks to slur me silly, there will be nights that talk me into bed, there will be strangers and there will be potential, the potential for that and so much more. And if I’m to be lost let me be lost in someone else’s neck, someone else’s breath, let the scents of every single one cling to my skin to carry on with me and I assure you I will not forget. Gosh, I am happy. There are so many places to go from here.