rmeisel:

1. You’re watching Apollo again. From afar, always from afar. Never from near. You watch him and observe the way his hair has grown the last few weeks and how some strands are falling down to his eyes. He brushes them away, harshly, and you wonder how these bruised hands would feel on your touched-starved skin. Apollo’s skin glistens warm like desert sand when the sun caresses him. Your name is Icarus. You’re born for this.

2. You watch Apollo again. You watch bruises fade and reappear, lipstick smeared on collarbones – or is it blood? – his skin shimmering like naked gold, flesh piercing out between his teeth. It’s a holy ceremony and you pray with your knees on the cold asphalt and your hands down your jeans. It’s your destiny to watch and fall, to fall and watch. All over again. Watch. Stop. Repeat until internal collapse.

3. You watch Apollo again. You watch Apollo and Apollo watches back. His eyes are blue, a particular kind of blue between the depths of the ocean and the frozen cover of a winter’s lake. A smug blue that breaks through the orange sky like a caramel sunrise. Apollo watches back and you feel your blood freezing inside your veins. It’s a bitter realization how much power this man holds over you. Your body shivers. Not even the sun warms you up.

4. You blink. You’re leaving the library with arms packed full of books about freedom and flying and birds who are chained to the sky when you see him. You can’t prevent it anymore, your eyes are drawn to the sun like a magnetic field that hypnotizes you over and over again and you’re terrified by the light but you’re more terrified of being surrounded by the dark again. Apollo smokes and his body bends in a way that makes you forget to breathe. Apollo smirks. He likes how you burn.

5. You blink. You’re at a party of someone you never met before and you don’t know how you ended up in this shady house with too many people and too little space but you sway your hips to the beat, close your eyes, count to ten. You think the neon lights blind you for a moment but your heart tells the story of crooked teeth and the smell of burned ashes and when you open your eyes you see him and he’s watching you, unashamed, as you did so many times before but this is not right, this is not the way it should be between you two so you start to run before you’ve even left.

6. You sit outside and the party is still full on in the background but you have a hard time understanding if it’s your heart that hammers between your ribcages or if the bass of the music drums through your head, you feel dizzy, you feel like vomitting your feelings to the ground when suddenly everything dies down. Apollo closes the distance and suddenly you’re sitting side by side and you see words like fatal and mistake dripping off his eyelashes. He’s making you quiet. He’s making you furious. You don’t know which one you prefer.

7. You sit outside and the party is still full on and Apollo closed the door and everything is quiet. There’s a gap between reality and something like blood sticks between the sharp edges of his collarbones but you don’t mind because his hands are on your neck, on your face, in your hair – do you want me to touch you? I’ve seen the way you look at me, I want to touch you, be still – and you are, you are still, you are quiet when he drags you over to the wall and pushes his knee between your legs and you want this, want him and his fingers dig painfully in your cheeks and your chin and he holds you still, so still you can’t move and it hurts it hurts and then he breaths nicotine down your throat and it feels like a prayer when every nerve inside of you splinters. You let yourself bleed into him. You forget that you only bleed on Sundays.

8. You stand outside with a boy between your legs and the party is still full on and Apollo breathes nicotine down your throat but it doesn’t taste of poison, it doesn’t taste of sulphur or ashes it tastes of sunshine and the weight breaks your ribs apart. The space between you two dwindles into nothing. The cigarette burns down until nothing remains but Apollo doesn’t stop until his mouth moves against yours and everyone told you it’d feel like drowning but it’s not, it feels as if he’s dragging you from the sea and you melt into his arms and he kisses you and you offer your flesh and your dreams and your mind and he takes greedily everything you give.

9. You blink. There’s your father and Apollo’s sister and there are people who love you and so many people who tell you he’s not good for you but you don’t care and you start to wear his cologne like a dress of bones and dead flesh and your eyes are blinded from the sun that shines through the hole where Apollo’s heart should be. Your phone buzzes once, twice, and you run before he even asks you to because you still believe he will patch you up every time he leaves you like a molten mess of wax on his sheets, spent and hurt. You watch Apollo pick your flesh between his teeth and you take his name and bury it between your thighs.

10. You blink. You’re at Apollo’s house and you don’t know how it happened or when you arrived but it feels sacred, it feels right, it feels good. Apollo looks at you with a red jumper and a fading bruise on his cheek and knuckles red and white and blue and raw and his touch is burning and you wish, you wish, you wish so desperately but you don’t even know what you’re wishing for anymore and then Apollo comes closer and he kisses you and you remember a bad night where the stars don’t shine, where the nightmares crawl and eat you alive and you feel home.

11. You’re at Apollo’s house and you don’t know how it happened but Apollo takes you to his room and pushes you on his sheets and you feel your skin peeling away when he drags his fingers over your chest. You want this, you remind yourself, you want this and Apollo makes the decision for you and you’re glad, you’re happy, you’re his. You smell salt and waves and blood, so much blood, but you can’t see anything because you have two holes where your eyes have been and Apollo grins and his teeth glimmer like the first sun rays on the hottest day of summer so you fall into his sheets and spread your legs and bare your flesh.

12. You’re in Apollo’s bed and you don’t know how it happened but Apollo lies beside you and he sleeps with a halo around his hair and his fingers clenched tightly around your body. You’re everything he has, you’re everything right in his life and he’s everything wrong in yours but you can’t see it, not yet, so you count the stars that shine through his windows and you wish for him to kill you, and you wish for him to stop bleeding ichor, and you wish for the night to never end.

13. You blink. Again. You’re leaving the library with arms packed full of books about freedom and flying and birds who are chained to the sky when you see him. Apollo smokes and he smirks and perhaps there had been a time when someone could have saved you before but you can’t prevent it anymore,  your eyes are drawn to the sun and you’re terrified by the light but you’re more terrified of being surrounded by the dark again. Apollo smirks and you hold your breath when the sky shatters around you and he asks you to come with him and you follow, you always do. The sun is your witness and it burns unyielding at the horizon. Your name is Icarus. You are born for this.

– Exit Wounds | r.m
excerpt from my book Sunblind, download it here or buy a printed copy here