upside down heart

the guy at the ice cream shop told me my heart is upside down. i start from love & work backwards. begin with abundance then whittle away until the debt surpasses the initial wealth. it’s a lesson, y’know, in personal finance & protecting all the bits of sugar & frosting & tendrils that still reside in my cavities. trying to warm my hands between my thighs so when i touch you, you feel the centuries i’ve collected of mothers’ breaths & fathers’ pride. i want you to exhale inside of me, finally, that one you’ve held in since puberty. but i’m not the magic i see in myself, that’s just for me, & i haven’t yet figured out how to brew the love potion & anoint you with it like a baptism. like a dive in the wave on the first hot day of the year. like the first drippings of the shower after hours laboring under the august sun. you taste like the ocean salt, like the spray of liquid friction. i hold you in my mouth, under my tongue, absorbing you sublingually, subliminally, subconsciously. yet i will not submit, won’t subtract, won’t substitute another’s spit. i tried but everything is flaccid, numb, inedible. you are the only nourishment i can sustain. i can’t comprehend your intentions, find you impossible to parse as if you’re moby-dick & the only part i get is the allegory for god but the words are really just mush, just soured puddles of stagnant water collecting under the rain gutter, in the sewer. i can feel your hesitation, your uncertainty & i know now it’s less to do with me, less to do with the roots growing from my toes, less to do with the claw marks i leave in your sweltering skin. i see fragments, frayed blanket, symmetry in distress. i don’t get it fully but how can i when it’s so snugly wrapped in your chest. it’s okay. it’s not mine. it may take time or maybe it’s for never but it’s okay. not everyone needs to embrace their own suffocation like i do. not everyone needs to chew the straw or the pen cap or the cuticle. raw & ribbed. pleasure or callousness. guttural or simplistic. you hold what’s yours & i’ve tried to wrench it away like the stupid selfish thing i am instead of letting you cup it gently, like the saltwater you imitate, like the grief in the canvas sack. & can’t i stroll out on the dock, never getting closer to the lighthouse, but admiring & calling out symphonies, soliloquies, sonnets in the mist? there is an antique sort of familiarity to your tongue tip, finger tips, whispers. i’m not saying it’s forever. i’m not even saying it’s real. but it is now. it is here. it is a thread i believe we both want to stitch with, in this moment, in this little sliver of time we’ve cracked off the face of the mountain. together. no, i know it’s not together together. i’m just saying it’s together that we drool, that we seep, that we pant & mark up the silence of this room, this sliver of space we’ve split from the stars, knitted from the dust. i’ve drowned my expectations, laid them to rest with the failures of inhales past. i just want to sit with you. alone & us. i just want to sit in your space & not be escorted out. i just want you to want to sit in me, cup my chin like you cup what’s yours, pretend for just one second that i too could belong to you, even if i can’t, even if you don’t want me to. just fake it, please, for just one second & i promise i’ll give you the oscar, i’ll take your release, i’ll hold your stare & i’ll swallow it. all of it. the solace & the bitter. i don’t want you to lie, you don’t have to lie to me, just with me, beside me, inside my upside down heart with the chambers & the clutter & the sweet cream. brush a hair from my face, tenderly. gently. pretend your heart is upside down too. just briefly. so fleetingly. just to take away the sting of living, of pushing through, of how alone we each are when we stumble drunk to the bathroom. sit in this sliver with me & remember why the stars deconstructed to begin with. why they rebuilt their societies in our flesh, just so they could feel the warmth of another. so we could become constellations. so we could memorize the upside down pulse of another.