Nothing But Velvet

Personally, I've always liked sunsets more than sunrises. Call me sadistic, but I've always found endings more beautiful than beginnings, if for no other reason than to watch how the universe ties up the strings. Colors at sunrise fit in a box: oranges, pinks, and reds, those colors striated across the sky the way my lipstick smeared when I first learned how to kiss. Colors at sunset were like a goddamn bomb went off: grenades of scarlet, tear gas in magenta, bullets of violet, streaking violently through the stratosphere in the hopes of tearing it apart. In my mind, the sunset always won. Sunrises settle in a sky that shows proof of the sun's entrance. Sunsets annihilate any evidence that the sun was ever there, leaving you with nothing but velvet.
I always think of sunsets when I think of you.
You hit me like a natural disaster in your own right, something like a hurricane that made love to a tornado, the love child of two unconquerable forces. I watched you walk up to me and I saw electricity crackle beneath your brows, pools of blue eyes that were soft and dangerous all at once, a security blanket made of barbed wire. Kissing you was like getting struck by lightning: you loved it for the way it woke you up. My lipstick ended up everywhere but my lips; I maintain you went home wearing more of it than I did. Hickeys were fondly called "love bruises", because who doesn't love a romantic? You were like nothing I'd ever seen, and it was only when I saw your silhouette in the sunset that I realized why you had me stuck in your gravity: your color.
The air around you shimmers indigo. A night sky sort of blue, wrap around you like a blanket, comfort at the end of a long day, just light enough to keep your curiosity piqued, indigo. The sun was setting and you blended in, a like creature of evening. A being of darkness that couldn't completely call it quits on light, and became a halfway something in a halfway world. I ran my hands along your body and found the nimbus across your shoulder blades, down to your fingertips and around your jawline. Looking at you removed recollection of anyone past, present, or future. You created worlds in the indigo cloak you wore, and I felt lucky to even get a glimpse of the galaxies created by your hands.
As the sun set each night below the horizon, I waited for the last few moments. When the star finally dipped into hiding, and the sky declared it night. In those last few breaths, the sky flashes violet and indigo. In those last few breaths, the sky becomes you, and I reach out to touch the wonder that is a placeholder when you're gone. The sky embraces me as you would, wrapping me warm and safe, as you would. The sunset is over, the night has begun, and it is the only beginning I love. For each night is the start of my love affair, and my lover is the boy made of indigo.
I reach out to touch you for the first time tonight. My fingers flit across your cheekbones, down to your jaw. You are soft and dangerous. But most of all, safe. You are home, you you you again. My hands come to rest at your lips. I feel nothing but velvet.

 

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