every morning the maple leaves; adaline

[adaline]

I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right

Would she die for him?

She feels him pressed against her—she tastes his flesh on her tongue—and she asks herself: Would she die for him? She reaches over and presses her forehead against him, feeling the surprisingly solid feeling of his delicate body. There is no space between them—not now. There is the absence of it, and she can only think about the way that they mesh together. There is something poetic about it. Something beautiful. (If the gods did not want them together, why would they carve them two pieces from one whole?)

…but would she die for him?

She thinks about the months after she had first told him she had loved him; the months after he had died because of it. She thinks about the sleepless nights wandering. The hours screaming in the forest. The weeks spent staring at nothing, gaze going blurry and disconnected. She thinks about the emptiness that had become of her life—the way she had been a gourd with all of the innards scooped out and spilled onto the ground. Empty. She had become so empty in his absence, shelled out and left to survive without him.

Would she die for him?

She would argue that she had.

“I love you,” she says again, eyes closing as she leans against him, her laugh so soft that it could almost not be heard. “I do not think that I will ever tire of telling you that.” She knows that the world would still work against them—would not understand the precious nature of the love carved between them, but she thinks that she knows two who would. “You know what I like to think?” She breaks apart from him just slightly, eyes brighter than they’ve been perhaps ever. “I like to think mom and dad are happy for us.”

in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator