May Garner

You’re Lingering in All the Right Places

My heart knows all, used to extinguishing any flame it didn’t ignite, but it stills when it comes to you. You and the waves that split me apart in the best of ways—right down the middle, where fire transpires into bliss. Right where my body is no longer whole or halved, but empty; drained willingly, fully, fortunately to you. Your tongue on a platter, this seat’s taken. I’ve booked the whole restaurant, and you’re the only thing on the menu.

Your high tides lap out any flames left to devour, the ones still burning cigarette scars on my heart. You didn’t start the fires, but you’re the firefighter, and I’m the burning house. It’s your job. Here, I don’t worry or scream or sob over the ashes of what could have been. I do not wonder how many more fires I will have to smother when I didn’t spark the flint and steel to begin with.

With you, there is no way to ignite, no fire to light, when you are drenched in me. Coated at the mouth, where I become you, and you becomes ours. Ours. Ours. Ours everything.

Your skin—hot like honey in the sweet parts of July—trailing down my back like you’ve traveled the path a million and one times and know exactly where you’re heading. Home. It’s the curvature of my spine, the dip where my side slides into my hip, the valley along my chest, and the bone-sickened fingers that long for yours.

Touch me here, grab me there, but my heart is the only thing you ever truly hold. You keep me safe, like a pocket watch graced to you by generations. You palm me like a newborn baby, fresh from the womb, gawking at the breast, and introduce me to the sun. Show me off to the world—the pearl in your oyster, the moonlight in your tide.

My heart knows all, wishing it would have found you first in its attempt to swim. Perhaps it would not have drowned so many times.
 
**
 
Tales of a Liar
 
I have spent many years plucking bits and pieces of liar’s skin out from beneath my fingertips. Where I once held on for life, moon creases at the shelter of shoulder blades, fearing a life alone rather than a life I deserved. I have emptied my hands, though. A type of withering that has sunk deep down into the marrow of my bones, eating away at the rot with a shriveled tongue until I was licked clean. So much time spent digging farther back into the ivory and crimson vessels, that I forgot to be on the lookout for a new set, finer flesh, one that would treat me right. 
 
You stumbled onto me like water finally flooding into parched earth; slow, right where it belonged, missing in action for far too long. I’d been known to believe that your kind had reached extinction long before I had a chance to delve in. A heart pure from the morning’s intentions, struck down into dusk’s promises, I had stopped bleeding myself dry over the hunt for an old wive’s tale better left untouched. Perhaps I didn’t know at the time how many slips of eternities had surrendered in my suffering, tempting me to go without, much longer than I needed. With one look into the misery, you snapped your fingers against the wick and reignited the flame.
 
There was a time where I feared the chill in my bones would never leave me, the remnants of a premature ache I was born with. That flame feeding off the pads of your fingers burned up into the center of me, branching out until I no longer felt the shake I had grown used to. I was handpicked from a void no other dared to enter before, fished out by the tips of slender digits, by the palms of your hands fleshed out along the curvature of my spine, raising me until I could taste the sun on a suit of flesh that was not made for the darkness it grew accustomed to.
 
I have washed these hands clean from a liar’s disease, peeled back skin by the layers until I could no longer catch a glimpse of the girl I’d been forced to turn into a while before. You wouldn’t even recognize her. By an act of unknown nurture, fortunate soil falling free from my neckline, you found me at the right time, just before earth spilled that very soil over my head. I cannot recall a time I could breathe clearly, let alone a time where there was not cotton and mud caked at the back of my throat. Now, though, the air is easy and a breath passes between the two of us, single in its arrival, spared by two sets of lungs working their way through chests for the same heart beat. 
 
You have wrung the tales of liars right out of my mouth.

**
 
When I Think of You, I Die, Too
 
When I think of you, I die, too.
 
You open me up like I have always been yours to touch. A flick of the finger, milking at the palm, you see all of me before you even know me. A withered flame too weak to set fire to your hands, what is there to fear about me? Me and the way my heart fades away. Farther and farther until I can no longer feel the warmth in my chest.
 
A hollow, rigid way of living, so I do not have to heave after you. Sob and spit, and cry for you, but you never wanted me anyway. A soul who cannot see me outside of the figure I cross. You want the crease of my lips, the valley along my chest, but you forget the heart that is beating underneath. 
 
I do good, but all this world feeds me is red. This heart bleeds for others, but no one is seeping for me. I can scream for hours on every ounce of hate I hold for you, but it’s never enough to keep it from fading. You dig your way in, knee deep, until I breathe you back in. A kiss of the lips, a pull at the wrist, love me until the world turns back on, forget me the second the night fades. 
 
These sides ache, crevices unknown, all ruined by you. A girl who grinned and laughed, and breathed for you, killed by you. Who was she and why can I not find her? Scream for her, but she won’t answer. She’s somewhere buried inside you, where she falls silent forever. You took her from me, a girl who knew no better. And now, I’m left with a shell of use. A monster who kills herself daily, just to be enough for you to grab onto, use as you please, toss away when you’re done. A routine I take in like air, one I cannot let go of. 
 
How have you become my lover, when all you have ever been is a liar?
 
**
 
Ashes
  
I’ll burn myself alive if it’ll treat you well in the end. The flames are always there. They’ve always been there, fuming right in the center of my chest, waiting to be put to use, waiting to set fire to the misery. I haven’t needed them, didn’t want them, but now, it seems I don’t have a choice. If it’ll do you good, if it’s what you want, if you’ll tell me you love me right before the ignition clicks. I’ll unleash them myself. 
 
My hands are strong, they house bold fingers, and there, under the nip of the night light, they find the purpose that’s been waiting for them. They’ll dig their way into the valley along my chest, peeling back flesh like the skin of a ripe and able fruit; that isn’t how you see me. I can spend hours here, thumbing through layers with a hangnail and a crooked smile. Pull and pluck, snap back the bones like nut shells and stems, until my fingers feel the warmth, too. Until they’ve caught on fire, too.
 
I wonder if you like seeing me this way, if this is what you wanted all along; doing what’s best for the sake of you. I’ll dissect my own self for you, dig where you see fit, dye my wrists burgundy if it helps you out. That fire, the one I didn’t start on my own, began in the heart and bleeds out onto these hands. Gnawing, snipping, grinding until each fingerprint is burned away and my identity is melted down into ivory and burnt bone. Just like you wanted me, all that needed from me; all yours.
 
I wither and you watch, we both sit through this game of haze. The smoke travels up through veins and billows out of my mouth. A pipeline of all of my whispers for you, all of my pleads, washed down in ash. The fire travels, too, eating away at my arms and their worth, up to my shoulder blades. I can’t reach for you, you don’t try to catch me; there is a difference.
 
It ransacks down my sides, taking me for what I’m worth, poor in its findings, gutting me again, but the fire finds me empty; you’ve already had your hands there, too. Down to my soles, a burnt path until I can no longer stand, the flames are still burning, still burning, still burning when they find my face. Right before it swallows me whole, I ask if you’re proud, if you’re happy, if this was what you wanted. Where’s your gratitude? Where’s your simple smile?
 
You only shake your head and watch the ash. “I never asked you to.”
 
**

Marrow Between My Teeth
 
In the crack of the mirror, I am the woman I’ve crawled into, but in my heart, I’m still the young girl, startled by her own shadow. There is no way to reach her, not where I am now. Even if my hands were to delve into myself, through thick flesh grown through years of torture, I wouldn’t find her there; only the crumbs of her mistakes left behind. Together, we are one, but in different life times, we are alone; all the same.
 
If I were to find her, though, I wonder if she would ask me if the pain was worth it. If the sacrifices and bloodied hands she owns make it right in some other way for her and I. There is a wonder if my heart will break when I allow the syllables to slip by, unleashing the truth that we’re still just as broken as she was, that no amount of glue or gentle handling can mend bones that have been snapped with misery in mind. 
 
The life she was given had already been soaked in melancholy far before she had a chance of delving into it, but now, my hands are messy and there is marrow between my teeth. All from years worth of digging and prying, and chewing my way free; I never made it through. I can only hope another lifetime of myself is staring back at me, decades down the line, grit gone and fingertips clean, free from the chains that never held mercy in their taking.
 
Who I once was deserves it, who I am now needs it.
 
**

Melancholy Mother

I am always told I do not resemble my mother, but I would if they asked the right questions. If they would, they would know we are the very same, identical, only on the inside.
 
Where do you get your selflessness? My mother. And where do you get your greed? My mother, as well. We are both hungry for things we don’t have, things out of reach, ways of living we will never know. We make the most out of the suffering we have, though. And we always will.
 
Where do you get your heart and the ache that goes with it? My mother must’ve pried hers apart and into two, given half to me when I tore my way into the world. Why should she be the only one to feel the ache, after all? I’ve never known a life without it.
 
Who helped feed the sadness living inside you, and who unleashes it? My mother’s hands planted the seed and they pluck it out from time to time, a hobby in mind, just to ensure my tear ducts still work.
 
Do you know who gave you the fire in your belly? She gave me that, too. Sometimes, the flames grow so heavy and I have no right mind to deal with them, that they eat right through my flesh, right into sight. No such wound can be easily stitched back into place.
 
I wonder if she knows I’m just like her, if she’s happy with her craft. A project she’s been mending together for twenty odd years now, so she can sit back and watch it. I wonder if she’s happy with the melancholy in my eyes, how it mirrors the ones she owns. I wonder if she is aware I will wither over time, just like she has. 
 
I wonder if she cares.
 
**

The Fire I Didn’t Ignite

My presence doesn’t echo anymore. You’d miss me without even trying. My heart beat is a knock that keeps pounding, but no one is there to answer the door. I am a glass body, translucent vases in place of organs; all that makes me who I am on full display. I’m a set of see through flesh, the kind that hides well in between the floorboards where you walk. Invisible. 

You swear you saw me a time or two before, but I am nothing more than dust in a crowded corner. You say you still whisper for me at night, but you don’t remember the syllables that make up my name. You recall that you heard me, but you pass the hour without a word to me. Does your heart still remember why you love me? Is it any better than mine?

I try to drown the reason to speak, but the glass shows all. Every ounce of water filtering in until my vases are full and overflowing. The empty echo, the heart beat that goes without answering, the floorboards I take shelter in, absorbs all of it and learns how to float, how to swim through the darkness I’m continuously left in. 

I want you to know how it feels to be left in utter silence, in a vast pit of darkness you didn’t ask for. I want you to relive the hard parts of my nights, the burdens I was born into, and the fire I didn’t start. Why should I be held responsible to set ease to flames I never set a match to in the first place? 

I am tired of crowding corners, shrinking myself so I won’t be moved elsewhere when I get in the way. I want to be wanted, want to be seen, want to be more than my skin makes me believe. My head tells me not to worry, that I have myself and myself cares, and myself listens, but sometimes, myself is not enough for myself. 

**
 
May Garner is an author and poet based outside of Dayton, Ohio. She has been dedicated to crafting and sharing her work online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising, and Melancholic Muse. Her work has also been featured in several magazines and anthologies, including ones by Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, and the Ohio Bards. You can find more of her work on Instagram (@crimson.hands).