she returned soft-skinned for him. among all the scaly demons he filled the void of her with, only one rivaled his love’s oily skin, powdered with the faintest hints of naivete and whimsy, the one whose eyes spoke of the same frenzied energy but with darker tones of jaded knowing. she was not the mind that he wanted; he missed the steam engine of his golden girl, a perpetually chugging life force that buoyed his dreams, stemmed new branches into his future, a vorpal pool churning and seething and spitting. his determination to stay purified of the taunting peripheral figures remained, even into the screaming silence of night’s bared teeth, the barren island of his bed, hot with a frequency long lost. he even found ghosts to occupy her spaces, in the forms of salamanders, screwdrivers, succulents that always wanted more moisture. nights became his waking hours, his life one long bated breath. he could no longer wake up and be surprised by a body, until one day he did and it was not hers. it was alien, it was an it. he thought of her shape, her mountain range of covers and shut the blinds tighter, but that slit of light could not be fooled. sleep seemed to take more energy out of him than it infused. his mind would flit to the electric hay-like hairs on her arms, her frail little limbs, and he felt the sinking sands beneath his ribs. the translucency of a nail could melt his heart, a knotted birth mark tugged him to someplace far away, and he thought he would never return to his body feeling whole.

but she did return, bursting, lithe, dark rings under stormy eyes. she returned like he knew she would, though he could never understand now. after a fall of nights, how could she suddenly appear with a serpentine spine still protruding, bones even more pronounced than their days of bedside starvation. she was a narrow thing, with steam still shuddering through her. the golden glow was now imbued with softer hues, an aurora borealis of silvery silk waning and rising, her skin thin as a moth’s. he wanted to know her wings as he once did. he began weaving together bits of everything that she touched so that he may always be close to her. the very littlest hint of an indication that she wanted him near gave him aspiration and serenity for days. the soft curves of every tiny bone felt wired to his shivering limbs; muscles mutated to hold hers in a silver spoon. all the while he saw her weaving in and out of avalanches, siphoning the water out of his organs. tiny whirring noises woke him up, a triangle of light illuminated against the wall. she muttered different languages beneath her breath and sometimes he felt a desert wind blow across her cheek. he began a series of wide-eyed nights again so she couldn’t shake him off in a sweat-drenched slumber. he watched her lips mostly, though once he peeled the covers back to watch her little toe exposed, just to see how much it twitched at night. she wanted the sheets to mold to her shape. they both felt as if they were riding along a swift-moving current, knowingly and willingly, without any understanding of how they were to get off.