To a Skeptical Face

To a Skeptical Face,

It was not breathing my way away with confectioners’ sugar or rolling my body into

a piece of paper tight enough to press (your) lips against

It was the wooden floor brown beverage and your skeptical look across a café table as I dared

“What’s wrong with a little addiction?”

It was the way you noticed immediately,

For me For my clock on my wrist on my screen in my eyes

For my tapping leg and the way I lick my lips

when I talk For I am ravenous,

“You’re not ‘if,’ you’re ‘when.’”

It was the sound of your words ringing in my ears

A Golden Promise

“To be honest,

I don’t want to reschedule,”

As if the coffee would burn and the ice would melt

into a sepia stale sludge

if we did not gulp it down like it was liquid diamonds

before my clock ran out.

It was the beat of the word

“Someday”

and its echo on the empty walls that forgot how to hear

as we guzzled our cubic zirconia.

I counted

Once

Twice

Thrice

But “Someday” bounced around and around until it got lost in the cracks and itself

Until around and around became a carousel that I could not get off of

“Someday, someday, someday” turned into /

Somewhere amongst the horses and lights and sounds

I stumbled my way towards the mirrors:

And it was not breathing my way away with confectioners’ sugar or rolling my body into

a piece of paper tight enough to press (your) lips against.

It was the walk in the woods slow Sunday head pressed against my own chest as I dared.

Love, Ravenous