Magic with Skin On

by Morgan Nikola-Wren

someone planted centuries in my soul.

there is nothing that leaves you feeling quite so small as having to shove all this being into your one allotted body

trouble is i wear my heart on my words

something in the dark of me is begging to throw open its windows

you play chills up my spine like perfect music

but, oh, how i lay you across my pages each night and light declarations up your every angle

i love you with a caution so reckless it's almost feral

let's take all our time out on each other

your eyes became my favorite music,

i wish all pain left poetry in its wake

i should have never turned my body to braille for your fingers

i found maps to every familiar place lined across your palms

do not call her fragile simply because she is in pieces you'll never know what it took to break her

the terrible truth is anything can look like love if you've got enough lonely in your eyes

i'm an entire bestiary trapped in a body,

i think i have a separate heart for every love that's ever grown inside me,

pour me a glass of your favorite grief let me take on the empty that fills you

you'll never taste like home, not the way he did

i have let far too many boys slide into me because they were not at home in their own skin

And he tastes like every word that has yet to be invented.

The way all art screams into the world.

Love like an adventure, but the trusting kind. The kind that lets her watch her secrets place their heads on his shoulders. Love like the best art. Like letting all the versions of you out at last.

At night, she lays her head against her own acceptance, and moon after moon, she teaches herself how to dream again.

perhaps you felt cheated because i turned out to be ten times the woman you bargained for

darling, recognize an inferno when you see one then run like hell

i want to stop making all these apologies into armor when i have no reason to be sorry

i want to follow your scars like streets like i know home is waiting at the end of them

do not fear the cricks and cracks of you that is the sound of a house well-loved well-learned well-lived

you're the last of my spectacular beast loves

perhaps, just maybe, i could tattoo my words the color of forever for you

Her never sees her. Never saw her. Not for what she was: magic with skin on