Heartline Cartography

For four days and three nights, I found you in the pockets of the real world, and we stole hours that burn brighter than any days outside of the ones we found in a forest in upstate New York, naked and laughing on a wooden floor because we couldn't quite do it any other way. The map etched into my collarbone says home, and it occured to me over and over again while you smiled at me that you are the only person in my life who has a grasp on what that means. You stood in the tiny, black ink star with me and we lived, together, through stories no one else quite believes.

You are my battlefield lover, and somehow that has always made your kisses taste sweeter. I curled up against your chest while I spun on wine and tiredness and you let me sleep with a smile on my face. The bed was too small, but it was yours, and in the morning I thought to myself that there was none more comfortable in that moment. When I met your other girlfriend, a student of the sword with eyes the size of the moon, the way you lit up made me want to cry. It wasn't until later that I realized you look at me exactly that way, as if I hold something bright and alive, as precious as sunlight or late August nights. It wasn't until now that I realized maybe I do.

You tied me up and set me free the night before I left. We slow-danced naked to songs that make me cry. When I bit the back of m hand to keep from shouting for you, I wondered if my skin could absorb your name like sunlight on oak leaves, to help me grow. I wonder if it already has.

When I told you there was a utopia inside my head, you asked me to share it. When I said it was you and me and lovers neither of us had met yet in a cheap apartment, its barely-not-empty walls echoing with laughter, you didn't ask me to stop. You told me you smiled, and asked me, "In this picture, are you wearing your old collar, or a new one?" and the tears I'd been holding since the back of a Greyhound leaving Milwaukee spilled onto my face like too much rain in a crystal glass.

I've tried to catch the light in you so many times. I've tried to keep it on the backs of my eyelids so it burns up the long nights when I'm not sure why I am. I've pointed my camera at your smile and click-click-clicked until I gave up with a frown and the thought that whatever you have in your heart is too big for a glass lens. I put pencil to paper and tried to draw the sun in your eyes and the lunar shine of the student of the sword, and all I got was graphite on my cheekbones. You glisten outside my lines, refusing to be tied down by anything quite as simple as art pouring from my shaking hands.

Listen--you are the fable in the back of my head, intricate and steadfast, reminding me of all the reasons I am. You catch my stutter in your lips and when you smile, it flees, like mist at dawn. My imperfections look like freckles that turn to constellations you are teaching me to read. When I see you looking at me, I wonder if perhaps I am the lines of a book and no one else bothered to read me long enough to say if the story is good.

This story is good. It's slow and it's strange, and sometimes I wonder if we're in the middle of a chapter or the end of one. But here it is, spinning out on pages made of question marks and maps no one has labeled yet. There are oceans we want to swim in and turns we want to take, only to double back and go the other way. What else is there to do? There are uncharted territories to draw lines in and sights we don't even know we wanted to see. Here we are, sometimes together, sometimes alone, making a map to answer all the questions no one ever wants to ask. When we see go no further, here be dragons, we look at each other and laugh.

After all, who doesn't want to see a dragon?