stay-
like you have stayed in all my anonymous letters, to anonymous strangers living in an anonymous world.
stay-
like the cracks on our bodies don’t bother you anymore than they bother me; like the regrets on my skin don’t fuck apathy into yours, when you get more intimate with luna than you are with me. like you haven’t been hiding my paintings under train tracks, because that is the closest you come to committing suicide, without ever feeling your bones break under the weight of people who move on faster than your wrists can lose it’s pulse.
stay-
like the sand isn’t silting over your eyelids, like it isn’t forming scars that would take ten million lifetimes- with lifelines that have been broken into ten different times, to form ten intricate types of breathing patterns that would still collapse into the same singularity- to even out with the rest of your skin.
stay-
like i haven’t been pressing prayers into your palms, when the planets momentarily loose their anatomy to the wild mourning of a widowed star, grieving the twin that has over-dosed on the distance that comes with being free from gravity. like a heart-attack is just another riot in your chest from bones being held in too tightly (you can only increase the density so much, before everything falls in or falls away).
stay-
like i haven’t been kissing every millimeter of your neck, just to feel your voice cords snap under my lips, because sometimes, it hurts more when you are prepared to talk, just to watch the the color in my pupils scatter, than when you remain silent to hear me scream out every reason that keeps me from whispering your name.
stay-
like the thought of leaving breaks your heart, more than it could ever break mine.
••ari purkayastha
and so you say..