They are words to be
carved into the marrow,
not carefully inked on skin,
but another could feel it thrumming
through your wrists or if fingers lace
with unleashed hunger around your neck

It lives in the blood and speaks
against any and all premonition,
all those who approach the delicate
places you've gradually revealed to me.

It would be wrong to
tell you that I love you,
to make my heart bend and fold
quietly into the shape of whatever
shadow that you will come to cast.

To seize your pain and make it my own,
as if drawing and following that map
can reveal a darkened center in you
identical to where I keep us close.

But when I say that you are mine,
when those words are exhaled heat
traveling along your face and neck,
blanketing your naked flesh in our blaze

I don't say them to possess you,
to turn you into some object
or prize to win and stow away,
flesh and blood are not meant
to keep in such a false shelter.

I want there to be no trace
of fiction between you and I,
nothing blossoms in premeditation,
but I know that I'm demanding,
that this flame wants full claim
over the intensity a siren casts.

It would be wrong to
tell you that I love you,
to quietly bend and fold
my shadow to match
the intricacies of your own.

To seize your heart and draw
you ever closer to this torch,
to this darkened center in me
where you'd finally know that
our needs are identical points
at different ends of a spectrum.

When I say that you are mine,
it's already carved into the marrow,
laced around this thrumming want,
blanketed in the blaze we lit together,
it began as a simple beat,
a pulse through your wrists.

And now I want no trace
of fiction between us,
the measure is too precise,
too painful when we part,
the fire towers with far
too much intensity without you.

But I know that I'm demanding.