These Walls

I love these walls, They’re colored with the stains of my youth, The smudges of my past, They enveloped us as we explored what it meant, To breathe someone else in and know no other air like it, We were surrounded in each other the same way these walls, Surround me now, We were safe and warm and alive, We weren’t new beings, But we had new life inhabiting our bodies, In these walls, I felt the holes of myself I didn’t know existed, The holes that would forever gape without you, Your hands showed me the places, That needed your hands, And it was, Every inch of myself, And though I hate it now, I loved it then, In these walls, We came to know what it meant to need, Not in a way that would sustain our bodies, keep our hearts beating, But in a way that would sustain our souls, give our hearts reasons to beat, For we can only find relief in each other, And without each other, we feel as though, Our pulses are worthless, In these walls, We pressed ourselves closer than we should have, Whispered promises, Signed with blood, And because of this, The ferocious space between us, Now feels like more than we can handle, And the air we used to breathe Is gone, We are choking just to live, Disgusted by who we realize we are, Accepting who we are, Without the other, In these walls, I examine the places I felt my back curl against, in relief, I stare at the old dents, The dents we made, Where I became whole in those hands, in every inch, At the aches of who we were, Who we are, imbedded in, Fading marks, And suddenly, They are just walls.