When we go to the party together you turn into a moth and I turn into a monster. Horns grow from the top of my head, break through skin, twist and pirouette into solidity. You touch them with the tips of your fingers and your hands come away bloody. I watch you muffle and pull and flutter and you go to the light over and over again. I try to hold your hand but my skin is burning, you can’t keep your eyes open, the colors in them turn and soften like boiling water and the steam rising on top. My friends tip drinks past their lips, they are caged away from us in the other room. The boy I fucked last week sits on couch, he sits on it with pursed lips, I ignore him, I’m in love with you. You drink in the lamplight like the inside of your stomach is a cave, something doused in dark, like it’s going to collapse without it, twisting and clutching. When I go to the bathroom I’m already drunk. I look in the mirror. My face is flushed red. The horns are growing longer; they are curling, bending and dipping towards my ear like some twisted ballet act. I try to rip them out of my skull but they don’t move. Before, I tried to pull the wings off your back but you winced. I tried to make you forgive me, you won’t. The boy on the couch turned to watch you. He raised a hand and played finger puppets against the light.
Do you remember this time last year? Every time I touched your palm my skin would split open, seam to seam. When I looked at you I thought I was drowning, my bones came alive and my breath would break but I could never cry, not in front of you. I could only cry when I was standing in front of the mirror, when I could press my hands to the glass, when I could see everything you did to me in blistering reality. Under cold lights, in my dorm room. In my childhood bedroom. When I smiled and when I cried and when I felt so sick I thought my spine was embedding itself into my stomach. It didn’t bother me that you might love someone else, it bothered me that someone else might love you, because I thought for so long that that was the most beautiful thing about me.
When I leave the bathroom I see you leaning against the window. I move to stand next to you. Our knees knock together. Your skin burns. I strangle in your dark. You tell me you love me. I tell you that I don’t know how to forgive you. You nod. I put my head on your shoulder.