The rain comes down in a screen of vertical lines over large faint blue clouds and a distant bar of orange on the horizon. It outlines the trees and buildings outside in white: making them something ghostly to talk about within.

You tell me that you don’t have the time to wade through all of my text. You say that I write too much and that you want shorter emails. The prospect of having to read another one of my stories is grounds for procrastination and yet another maybe tomorrow that never comes.

And to hear you only say, “Okay,” after you bother to glance at a thing I spent time making, and to add that you never liked writing or poetry to begin with is almost as bad as one great faked orgasm.

So the fact of the matter comes down to this. I am not a supporting character. I am a protagonist. I am the protagonist of my own life.

And no amount of cock-sucking is worth this.

I hold your cheek in the palm of my hand. Corduroy warmth against my hip. You fit there. Fingers through gold — almost white — mead of your hair. And an impish smile that matches the curves and the high cheekbones and nose of your face.

My lips kiss the spot between your cheek and the curvature of your nose bridge, in the hollow of your pale brow, and you blink it away and stare back like a cat with deep blue eyes. Young girl with tender lips, wry smiles, rolling your eyes and the softness of your skin. Your gentle, husky voice telling me that you trust me.

I wish we could have grown together. Because I’d forgotten what it was to want to tenderly devour, and fiercely protect. Even after you left, and the closeness of our hands together became the coldness of distance in just one dark night, somehow all of this still remains. I miss you. I miss what could have been, even if it never truly existed.

T-Shirts and long hair. An open face, you say.

You laugh at crawling in my skin.

And one slow scream ignites inside my chest that never fully comes out.

Red hair splayed over my arm like blood: fine stone teeth anchored in pale skin. The roar of blue vein-vanity and the loud chords of a song fill my ear where I rest it. The chest’s hollow bellows rise and fall. Two small mountains beyond time now.

I belonged. I reclined under the narrow ceiling and warm couches like a god between warmth. And the children of Aristophanes were not two — but three. Three and infinity.

Until the Angry Itch came.

Wit and artifice dead and stripped away. Awkward pauses. Crushing silences. Hades’ hidden treasures of pain. I reach, but I can’t, and I need. Wisdom.

I still hurt.