THE CORPSE THAT USED TO FLY

His touch haunts me.

Like a single spindle of a spider’s thread

Latching onto raw skin.

Even as I bat it away, dismissing it,

I look for the spider

Like lingering ripples—its sensation still vibrates through my body

Though its presence has settled at the bottom of the lake.

It’s buried there, now.

Our past.

And I wait for a stray kiss

To take me back

To how your careful web felt

As it caught me.

There, in an act of great passion and heat—

The very act that taught me I had a heart—

You crawled out to suck my blood

Adrenaline kicking in for the first time,

And the last,

Draining me of my ability to love.

Why should that moment be lost forever?

Why can’t a single good thing stay?

I know now love comes with a price.

And it has eaten me away.