flea ridden
everything is muffled and clean when i walk in through your door.
i have bathed in dust and soil, and with each step i track more and more inside.
i lay on your cool kitchen tile and it bites my skin.
a constant reminder that i’m here, in your sparse home that sings of you,
but now with me here there is mud on your floors, decorated with the dust i brought in.
when you finally come back and walk in through your door, light as ever, and you see me, i want to apologize enough that my throat closes up and i suddenly can’t talk.
my eyes sting and the tears well up, so i bite it back and i just say, “hi,” from the corner of your kitchen.
you smile and wave, and you say “hi,”
i want to apologize, i do.
every time i see your front door i want to cry and kiss your hands. i just can’t seem to help myself.
i just can’t help running back to you whenever the days have ended, and you and i both know i never quite get clean.
there’s always a mess i leave.
i come knocking on your door in february, no flowers, just blood stained teeth and muddy palms.
you let me in anyway and smile at me anyway, and then you invite me over again anyway.
and even though i promised myself ages ago i’d stop taking advantage of your hospitality, i end up coming over again anyway.
i tell myself, as long as i don’t stay the night.
i can allow myself this, i think looking at you, but i can’t have that, i whisper, late at night.
i turn up like a stray dog, lonely and cold, covered in fleas, pitiful.
and you, with your lemon cleaner and shiny wood floors, let me in.
it’s hard for me to understand why.
i come into your house and i eat your food, i dog ear your books, leaving my trace everywhere.
there’s nothing pretty of it, it smells of blood and earth.
crude and bitter, stinging.
it mixes with your soap scent, and contrasts the florals, clogging your blankets and pillows in one sharp smell that begs your tears to come to the forefront.
i contaminate your gentle spaces, leaving mud in the grout of your tile and blood frosting your carpets.
then i leave, but i come back tomorrow, and you let me in.
i know why i do this, because you are my flame and i am a moth.
greedy and dusty, squishy and easy to hurt.
what i don’t know is why you do this, why you let me do this to your home.
you open your door every time, you hold me closer every time, and leave your clothes stained and your pillows smelling sharp.
why do you do this to yourself?
you are better than this, better than me, you waste your time on something that was never properly taught to love people.
we sit down on your sofa and with your hands in my hair, combing out the ticks, you ask me to tell you a story.
so i do, and when i run out of aesop’s and grim’s, i tell you i don’t have anymore, but you ask me to tell you stories about me.
so i do, but not nearly enough of them are happy or meaningful, and i told you so, but you wanted them anyway.
so i tell you all of them, i tell you of my sweat and tears.
i tell you of my cold, angry fists.
i tell you of the way my bitterness has flowed like a pulse since i was young, steady and life giving.
after each story i expected you to yank your hands back and spit on me, adding to the uncleanliness, but instead you don’t.
you just tell me one of you and weave my hair in a new fashion, and surprisingly?
despite all the stories now threaded in your mind, every good reason to not let me in again, you do.
you let me nestle my way into this place you’ve carved out for yourself.
this gentle place with sunlight streaming in through blinds and white walls and linen shirts.
you let me take this holy place and desanctify it.
you take the parasite i have lodged into you, with my clumsy and unknowing hands, and you feed it, day and night.
you worship it and devote it gentle love, you pick the leeches off of me but you let me in your house.
you let me use your washing machine and you take the soaps in your tub and wash me with them, even though it never gets the blood and dirt out from under my fingernails
you even reach over in the middle of my spiels to kiss my fingertips covered in dried mud.
just because.
i wish i understood you and why you let me keep taking, why you keep giving me more and more.
why you open your door once again, and hand me another thing to ruin.
you kiss my bloody mouth, unhesitant and unmistakably, and every night you invite me to stay.
and every night i almost say
yes.
its basically when u love a person with a stable life knowing that ur life is a wreck and feeling guilty for it
