one more time, darlin'

can’t break a home that was already broken. and i just stroke your jaw, letting you believe your own softness. i never cared about the ruins. i only cared about you.

you love a woman who is easy but easier to blame. and i never mind being the place you collapse when your excuses wear thin. come here, dear boy — let me steady you, let me quiet the trembling under your ribs. lay your head on my chest. she doesn’t deserve you. i can take better care of you than she ever could.

you’ve watched my world burn and called the flames beautiful, and maybe that’s why i let you bruise me in whispers. somehow i love you more when we’re broken up. there is something intoxicating about losing you. to wonder about you.

you say that you can’t control yourself. you can’t resist me. good. i like you undone, reaching for me like i’m the last sin you were ever meant to taste.

you’re a perfect fit, my sweet boy. they made you dangerous enough to keep me hungry. takes one to know one.

let them scrutinize me. i’ll carry every accusation as long as it keeps your secrets safe. i’ll protect you, angel, even when you cut me open. i’ll only ask that you to be gentle about it.

and when you murmur that newfound devotion — you’ve found jesus and i’m the sin that pulls you off the alter. you’ll ask me to take my clothes off one last time, let’s make this sex holy… before you send me on my way.

i only smile. you know i won’t fight you. i never have.

and you do what you always do. rise from your lovers nest with that soft, guilty tenderness that almost feels like love. touch my cheek like it matters. then slip back into the life that you’re unsure why you left in the first place.

go back to her. god calls man to be the head of the household. imagine her touch a mine. pretend her hands know how to soothe you, the way i did. slow, patient, hungry, carving your ego back together… a tired matron vs the young beauty that pulled you off course. pick your poison.

you know what i was for you.

a balm.

a sin.

a lullaby for the parts of you that you never speak of.

and when the gates click shut, i draw my locket back to my breast — your fingerprints still warm on my skin, his ashes resting where you once pressed your mouth.

you return to the woman who owns your name. i return to the man who owns my grief. neither of us ends up with the one who touched us the deepest.

but you’ll remember me, in the quiet, in the dark, in the moments she reaches for you, and you wish it was my body beneath your hands… darlin’.

Chloe