We protect each other.

I am needy heart between my teeth romance swirling through my bloodstream cinnamon and pine needles. I take it to other men, I steal away outside to howl my loneliness at the moon, beg the sky for answers. There is nothing in my life that has ever taught me I deserve this. There is nothing in my life that has ever taught me I deserve him.

I spend my days turning him on and I don’t mean to but I mean to. I am shivering with it, this thing between us, and I want to share. Sex I know. Sex is a sphere where I know I have value. I convince myself I can accept sex from him where I can accept so little else.

All these articles about compatibility. I always believed people who let lust overtake their lives are so stupid. I was such a superior idiot. I was so wrong.

His spine stiffening, when I came by. He showed off exactly how well he could wait and say no and not fuck me all day long. He was proud of his no and his no cut right through me. I thought I could resolve his pain and fix the sky between us with sex. I was so wrong. Sex can do many things especially when you are aching for it every second but sex cannot take the place of words.

And I thought my love was toxic. I thought the less of it the better.

He is the face of passion restrained, in my memory. Strain in his forehead, bitterness in his cheeks. I stand frozen in his foreground, halfway between I should have gotten a Brazilian and I wish I was the kind of girl to get Brazilians, wish I had lost 50 pounds before I ever met him, I…