Gartenherz

I  don't know when you did it, probably one night when I was fast asleep, but you brushed your fingers across my breast, caressing every inch of me, until you found the seam running across me. You traced the seam with your fingers until you found the ends of the ribbon holding me together. Gently, you unlaced my chest and opened me up, ribs splaying outwards like claws grabbing at the air. Before you my red heart pumped life through me and all my existence lay there for you to discover and understand. Of course your curiosity got the better of you so you unlatched my heart and opened it up and saw all my fears, and dreams, and secrets neatly laid out in labeled drawers and you opened each drawer and read each fear and dream and secret then you meticulously folded each one and placed them back in the drawers and shut each drawer but not before adding a few fears, dreams, and secrets of your own. Then you unlaced your own chest, reached into your own heart, and pulled out a seed. You dug a little hole in the dirt floor of my heart and dropped the seed in. You patted the dirt back over the seed, closed my heart and latched it shut, then replaced my ribs, one by one. You folded my skin back over my body and, with jet black ribbon, laced me back together. Every day you must water that seedling because I've felt it growing. It pushes at my chest and it feels tight and cramped with how big that little seedling has gotten. Right now, laying in your arms, your fingers tracing small designs on my back, I think it just burst into full bloom because everything feels so beautiful and right. And all I can do is thank you for planting a garden in my heart even after you saw everything I was made of.

The Guilty

Guilt over you overwhelms me in a crashing landslide of heated cheeks and sinking feelings. And every time we sit in the green tinged dark and my skin is next to yours, I think about how horrifying I am and how incredible you are and the fact you know next to nothing about me but the little thing I told you and you still chose to hold me that night. How I long to be hollow on the inside and light as feather and you said, “Why didn’t you…” and I couldn’t say why because you will never understand the ethereal feeling of empty. But you still held me that night. You still ran your hands across my skin and gently kissed me and brushed my hair from my face and pet me.  And for all that I feel guilty. There’s so much more you could know about me and I think you’d regret every night you’ve spent in my bed if you knew the decline in my soul to the withered husk it is. Perhaps now I’m filled with more life than I ever was before, but there’s still the gaping hole of loneliness and sadness that overcomes me sometimes and turns me into the dead thing I was before. And for someone like you who’s only had one person, I feel so guilty that person is me. You deserve someone more together, more whole, than the girl you found the first night of college at the crazy meet and greet in the dark. The one who made a secret handshake with you and laughed when ours was the lamest of them all. The girl who saw you later on at a party and talked for a while and you made her laugh at all the dumb things freshman do. The one who took you with her the next night and we stumbled back to my room after, a little more than tipsy, to sit on my bed and talk for hours with me begging you in my head to kiss me! Kiss me you fool! Until we collapsed under the covers and fell asleep, only to wake up a few hours later to our lips touching and bodies tangled with each other. And soon your hands wandered over me and explored who I was until your alarm went off at 7 am and you turned it off and went right back to making me feel like I was living in some other dimension. And the next night was the same, with us stumbling back to my room and this time I pulled off my shirt and slipped out of my panties and let you look at me, completely bared and you beckoned me to your arms and that is the point where I almost, almost wish I could take this all back because I’m not a nice person and I might end up breaking you and I think I might be attached to you because you’re definitely attached to me. And I think I killed your innocence, in fact I know I did, so that’s why I feel horribly guilty every time your fingers brush my skin. But I certainly won't stop you from doing it because I think we both know that I am selfish. So you continue to keep me up each night and I'll continue feeling guilty.