"When we were kids, we hung our hopes from stars," he told me, then smiled, pink and white.

He said, "I don't think lovers will ever kill each other."

He said, "They'll die together, as one body. Now close your eyes." And he tried to reach me, but I had already left.

There was sugar in the suns rays and it melted down our bodies, like ice-cream sliding down the bones of your wrist. I told him, I didn't believe in deities, but he was good enough. We danced at night, in dreams we painted our lullabies through hazy smiles. He smelt of soap and warmth, but in my dreams he twisted the smoke into ringlets, and played them around my arm. When the rain beat like drums against the window, he hid his eyes and dug his fingers through my hair. It burnt, but his lips were freezing. I loved the way he melted into me. Reason escaped. It turned to friction, and he rubbed my skin raw with butterfly kisses.

He said, "I feel like I'm dead."

I said, "You can't be because I'm still breathing."

We waltzed in velvet and he dressed me in pearls. He kept time by playing it along my spine, and each tap deepened, his fingers sunk down deep. Our legs slid in and out, onetwothree, onetwothree. His breath was moist and full of promise. There was heat hidden behind each of his ears, and I learned to love the smell of ashes. We'd dance until midnight, and he'd fade with each chime. I never thought I'd love being haunted so much. The music was real, and we favoured it above our art. He sung to me under his breath, and all I could do was laugh. He sung his songs by tasting each word in his mouth, running them over his tongue. His voice was slow, I fell asleep on his arm and it was far too hot for summer. I thought I would die.
He said, "Things may be easier when you're not breathing."

He tied oleadors into my hair, and said, sooner or later, the posion will leak out. I said, "It'll get into your veins, you won't touch me again."

He told me he wanted to try dying for love.

I went crazy for minutes and he held onto me for hours and whispered idioms into my ear. We read evening like poetry, and drank words like cheap wine. I got woozy and he held my hand as we twisted on the dew drops.

He said, "I feel so alone in this head," and, "I wish you were here with me."

His mouth was a cave, mine was a grave. We spent hours exploring, looking for that secret X, the treasure underneath. When we couldn't find it, we emerged, and spent more time discovering the planes of each others face. I wore jeans the first time, and his hands imprinted each secret code, like a typist typing away on his last greatest novel, and they bruised my skin. I asked him, Isn't this the point, to have a mark where no one else sees? It was sticky hot and he wouldn't let me smile. We colored our secret and adopted her as our own. When no one looked he ran his hands down my back. My skin withered the days that he was gone. When he didn't return for weeks at a time, I called him Icarius and sewed him wings. He didn't like the cotton, but anything was better than the days he'd spend drowning out at sea.

He said, "There are certain things worth the risk."

I told him they weren't worth the scars. Some days, things got so fuzzy in our heads, we'd sleep so hard on each others limbs I'd forget which leg was mine, and how to walk. He carried me down stairs and tickled my sides. Our math sometimes got so confused. Two minus one equals nothing. There was certain things you could always count on. He learned how to paint by brushing rose upon my cheeks. When the sun went down, he turned into shadows and curved my waist. I wish I could have run my fingers down the flesh of his spine. We prayed to moonflowers, and he crushed tiger lillies under his shoes. He had a cut on his arm, and it fascinated me. I liked to run my fingers over the ridges. There came a time when he licked the minutes off my neck. I loved the way we'd shiver and he taught me the beauty of silence, the ravine between each expected words.

He said, "things are better when they're not full of promise."

He said, "when we were kids."

He said, "when we were kids..."