the space we kept between us

held together by everything left unsaid

photo via pinterest

past lovers have left a mark, but now they look like nothing more than splinters in our heels. the dull, healed-over pain that you only recognize when you look too closely. a quiet reminder that what we bury is often where we break.

i’ve seen this film before, and still i step into something that feels untouched. a radiance that settles over a love sustained by unnamed feelings, as if we could live forever in the space between heart and mind.

but for a moment, it feels like nothing could be missing. it sits between us, unspoken, like we’re both afraid of what it would become if we said it out loud.

when the sun is at its perfect glow and the clouds are dancing past us in the sky, when our bare feet hit the earth as we run through the field in the glistening evening air—i glance to him and catch the softening of his eyes and the soft certainty in his smile. i already feel this memory carving itself into me, knowing i’ll never want the feeling on my skin to be forgotten. i feel him everywhere—in the tips of his lashes, the curve of his lips, the palms of his hands, and i know exactly what he’s feeling.

i feel it, too.

the golden outline of him flickers as we pass through the shadows in the trees that keep us up at night. we chase our dreams and our nightmares down the same road we share, slowly fading as we get too close to the things we can’t admit.

my boy is an angel. when he smiles, my heart flutters. when he looks at me, the world fades. he gives me flowers and opens doors. but he kisses me with blood in his teeth.

the words we never say hang between us, clawing at my throat with their rusty fingers, ripping tears in my skin like they’re tired of me swallowing them whole. they burn behind my teeth like poison pooling on my tongue, dripping from the stems of the roses we buried in the yard—dying to be set free.

i’ve forgotten how to speak—a vow of silence given in desperation as i waited for him to say it first.