ryleigh wann

On Missing You

I am laying on top of your chest, face burrowed
between your shoulder and neck and all I can imagine
is Pompeii and the way two human bodies of flesh 
and bone covet to hold the familiarity that other bodies bring—
bodies that once maybe kissed their mother good night or 
peeled oranges from the port on a hot day. These bodies 
now casketed in molten ash were once glowing, like
the suns they would watch rise together, with their sons
they hoped to raise together. You are still asleep. 
The small, simple exhales from your mouth 
smell like sour citrus beer and remind me that one day 
we will both die and disintegrate, settle into Earth 
that spit us out to begin with and grow into tulips 
or daisies or weeds that will be picked and wilt
in a vase, again and again. This, my darling, is how 
we will continue to exist, the warm blood of our bodies 
blooming until the planet burns out. This is how we covet.

On Thoughts I Can’t Say Out Loud

I am sitting on my neighbor’s back patio because it is hot outside and I want to smell like sunscreen. I want to smell like sunscreen because this is day twenty-something of social distancing and I am running out of things to do. I am running out of things to do because my mind can’t focus on one productive task without drifting to Michigan and remembering my family there or missing you. I am missing you because since this pandemic began, you have slowly started reaching out. You have slowly started reaching out because you have anxiety and I was always a sense of calm for you, the smell of wet grass after a devastating storm or an old sweater, growing cozier with age. I am a sense of calm for you because dating someone with BPD means you burn yourself up from the core to give them light and warmth and embers that all resemble consistency. It is consistent for you to say you are glad we are still friends and can talk like this. I don’t say that talking like this wrecks me, as if we are pretending things are normal, as if we are eating egg sandwiches on my front porch and are still very much in love. We are not still very much in love. We probably won’t have those days again. But for now, the world is on pause and things feel slow. Things feel slow because when I am talking to you, I don’t pay attention to the slipping of time around me that means soon these phone calls will cease once again.