I.
I hate it when you smoke. You always try and not do it while I'm around, but sometimes I guess it can't be helped. You find matches out on the back deck patio or the tiny lighter you throw in the coffee stained floor mats of your dad's old car and leave the window rolled down, willing your headache away and keeping your addiction away from my parcels of clothing I know you wish I'd take off. 

You always express your addiction as ignorance; belittling the issue with mantras of 

"It's only once or twice a day.", or
"These don't have as many toxins as others."

I've never heard you say: "I know you wish I'd stop."

You always say sorry
and I always mutter how little it affects me.

(I have yet to figure out if either of those are true.)

II.
I don't want . I've never in my entire life wanted that. I suppose it's unfair for me to let you wander the dark of my wishes and preferences and expect you to know when to draw the line, but I find myself doing it anyway.

We lay in your bed, incense burning and weaving it's smell into the stitches of my clothing and the messy strands of my hair splayed on the comforter. Your knee delves between my thighs and the harsh jut of your hip on my pelvis begins to ache, as if you're trying to transfer your wants and needs without words, and I have not the slightest clue what expectations you're hanging over my head. I remain stationary and grip at anything I can get my hands on to keep from panicking.

I suppose the touches mean something different to you, as well. To me, my hands in your hair are there out of affection, fingers running up and down the planes of your back to vainly try and soothe whatever cracked surface it is inside of you that causes the need for Klonopin and to stay up all night into the morning for your 10:00 o'clock classes. Thumbing the sharp line of your jaw and having difficulty locking gazes, unable to read your dimmed eyes grogged with fatigue from the burnt out affects of caffine pills and coffee consumed while you work 12 hour shifts after a measly half hour nap in the afternoon.

Your touches are lethal. Injected with poisonous intentions, you rake your hands up under my shirt and lightly scratch down my sides, face pressed harshly to my clavicle, coming up to kiss messily at my lopsided mouth while you roll atop me, hand firmly on concave ribs and tongue cautiously inside lips while my heartbeat borders cardiac arrest.

You notice occasionally; letting your hunger fizzle out and returning your head to my chest, catching the frightening thump of the dead muscle in my ribs and glancing up. My eyes are locked between the junction of the popcorn ceiling and a periwinkle wall, eyebrows drawn together so slightly you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking.

You were looking.

"What's that look for?" concern pools in your words.

I shake my head slowly, look at you.

"No, what's the matter?" you presses gently.

I give a small smile and shake my head again.

You're staring at me, I can feel it, but I let my view travel back to that junction between the wall and the ceiling.

"Kyungsoo.."

I swallow, louder than I'd hoped it would sound. Your words are crystalized honey and I'm choking on bittersweetness.

"You look at me like I'm trying to devour you. What are you thinking? Hmm?"

My heart thunders on.

"I can tell your scared, it sounds like your heart's gonna break through your chest. Hey, look at me. Please."

I look over and you're so discouraged and my chest hurts. 

"Hey. Hey hey hey. You're safe here, all right? You're in a safe place. We're not doing anything. Just relax."  

(All I can think about is if your past affection was a good .)

I know you mean well
but
I can't stop

shaking.

III.
I know you miss him. Please don't say you don't, it only hurts worse.

I refuse to let his name fall from my lips, allow the bitter string of vowels to scrape from behind my teeth, instead letting it linger and fester in the back of my throat like bile while you exhale his name in smoke and shaky breaths.

I don't ask for more than what you tell, but he was never faithful, never easy to please, and sunk in misery like tar that you could never get him out of. He broke it off with you over a text message in your music studies class.

You never officially asked me to be yours.

I recall you telling me that this wasn't too serious, that we were doing this to spend our time happily with one another, for both of us to enjoy.

(I wonder if you enjoyed taking chunks of me away every time I kissed you goodnight in front of my house.)

(I wonder if you'll ever miss me like you miss him.)

Do you miss me yet?

(I miss you.)

IV.
You are so incredibly beautiful. I've never gotten the chance to tell you, the words always caught behind a filter in my mind that trapped everything important I wish I could've told you about. So I'll tell you now.

Your smile is deadly. I still recall memories of you laughing, though sparse, the mental image continues to burns shapes and marks into my vision. The slight smirk of your lips flourishes warmth in my chest and sprouts sunflowers that crack through my ribs and protrude against my skin. 

I love your hands. They're not beautiful, not necessarily, but they're perfect. Much larger than mine, your hands are long and sturdy and worn with lines of work. Fingers thick and slightly uncomfortable between my own, sometimes clammy and continuously dragging the calloused texture of your thumb over my soft skin. I remember the time you were driving me home with your left hand sandwiched tightly between both of mine in the passenger seat, and we went through all 4 intersections near my house without you having to remove your hand from my own to change gears and stop the car for a red light. That's never happened once in my entire life. I thought it was a sign that I was meant to be there, holding your hand, heart thumping repetitiously hard in my chest. Maybe I was then. 

I'm not now.

You're ridiculously lanky. Maybe that's a negative word to you, so I'll say slender instead. You're all limbs and stretched tendons, boney wrists and knobby knees. Your collarbones are stunning and I find even the bones of your ankles beautiful. You're six-foot-way-taller-than-I, and I love the way I fit next to you. 

You make me feel tiny, insignificant. 

(And that's perfectly okay.)

Your voice is probably my favorite. It's timbre resonates as a group of professional orchestral bassists, rich and dense and warm like melted caramel. Your voice finds a way to stoop even lower when you mutter important words into the shell of my ear, as if you're choking on your own thickly sweet tone and can't force your words from behind the molassas-sticky gathering at the back of your tongue. 

(I find myself listening to your melody of garbled affections and reassured "I love you, I really do"s.)

(Please- 

don't.)

V.
I don't know how any of this happened. First outings to go walking on sticky summer nights when I drowned in first impressions and thick atmospheres, refraining from asking if you've ever wanted to jump off a bridge, and seconds to state fairs when I was too indecisive to tell you what I wanted to eat, later parking at the entrance to my middle school and laying your head in my lap when you asked me why I didn't like myself. I don't know why I allowed any of these firsts to start.

I don't know where I lost myself.

Even now I still picture myself in the future without afffection like you've given, living independantly without one kiss from another person since I've decided to not return your texts.

No more visits to riverwalks in the fall, glazing eyes through dead foliage at ladybugs skittering across marred skin and trembling accidents you'll never see. No more settling myself under your arm and you kissing my shoulder while we're out at dinner. No more one-sided arguments in pitch-black winter car rides about why I won't argue back. 

Or respond. (At all.)

"Why won't you say something?!"

(Your anger dyes metled oceans in my gut dark blue-black like my bruised heart.)
(You're the engineer of your own trainwreck and I can't lift ing trains to save you.)

I've become lonesome for your presence only when it's gone, and finally realized that the reason I can't reply,
The cause for my silence,

has always been my own

fault.

Missed Calls From: Chanyeol
2:16AM, Dec 3
12:22PM, Dec 4
5:16PM, Dec 5
3:31AM, Dec 6

From: Chanyeol
5:42AM, Dec 7
I didn't mean to make this hurt. 

Delete.

From: Chanyeol
9:06PM, Dec 18
I'm sorry Kyungsoo, I'm just so sorry.

Delete.

From Chanyeol
12:58AM, Dec 30
I miss you. 

Delete.

"This message thread will be deleted."
I press "OK" and let the phone slip languidly from my palm
and shatter
to
the floor. 

For the record, it still hurts.