Work Text:
Watching you move is visceral—the way you breathe without living, like a man on death row. You are a corpse pleading with a mouth half-chowed through by maggots, “I am alive—breathing—not dead—please-” and I am the saint by your side running my hands all over you; hanging onto the fleeing warmth from your neck, your hands, your breath like the fading coattails of a winter swallow.
Love is hard for those with a foot in the grave, but maybe entwined in a loose embrace like this, we could pretend that the mound of stinking flesh twisted beneath us is a tangle of blankets, innocent as a childhood sleepover, and that this nightmare of dying and living is one that has an end.
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