A Memory Before This

I sift through our letters.

Words float from the pages like butterflies released from their slumbered metamorphosis. They flutter past me until the pages are blank and I scramble desperately to collect them to memory. 

A lifetime passes as the door closes behind you. The lock clicks into place like a gunshot.

I wake to the sound of water. I walk the dark hallway and open the light. The kitchen glistens in submerged linoleum. Sheets of water arc from the ceiling to the floor. My feet sink into the sogged carpet at the threshold. All that is in darkness, disappears. There is beauty in catastrophe, a wondrous disregard for order and expectation. I stand transfixed on the potential for disaster. I stand transfixed until the frantic footsteps from the hallway snap me out of my stupor. Why do I stand here doing nothing? I stand there here doing nothing because none of this is real. 

Do you love me? 

Would you save me if I were drowning?

Because, my darling, I am drowning now,

And I am drowning still.

I paddle at the surface as my twin sinks and takes in water. 

I hear his muffled, sorrowful gasps. My heart sinks with him but I paddle still, searching the horizon for any sign of you. 

The sky is so big. 

It grows dark 

but not before shrouding me in this brilliant vermilion. My outstretched hands silhouette against the pale cerulean sky, pink contrails crisscross the firmament. 

I am so small beneath this miracle. 

I am so small within this churning sea. 

The ocean is deep beneath me, the sky is vast above me. And I am in the middle, at the very center of everything.

I wake and slowly shake the dream from my eyes. I hear you breathing, and the weight of your arm draped across my chest soothes me as I transition from that place to this. You are so beautiful in this soft morning light. I am overcome by you. 

I watch you sleep. 

I fall into the atmosphere and orbit of your loveliness, 

I succumb to the gravity of your mouth.