this isn't really a song but i just wanted to write.

I just want it to be right you say and then there is a moment of silence where you are waiting for me to say something back but I keep the air sealed tight away behind my lips and then you laugh a little awkwardly and I exhale slowly after a long time. Nothing is right I say and you shake your head gold light torching the soft dark strands of your hair. Some things are right. But you don’t look at me as you say it.

The rough chop cut of bangs hitting my eyes is not as it should be is not fitted is not me at all but none of this is and isn’t that the point after all. None of this is right, none of this is how it should be but it is not something we acknowledge we keep it buried down deep unspoken renewed in silence every morning. When the slanted light cuts through the thin fabric sheet we wake up on opposite sides of the bed where we have twisted away to during the night as our bodies know they are not meant to be tangled together in the ways we force them, as if they know this is wrongwrongwrong.

Your hand twitches forward like an accident until you brush a thumb across my cheek the joint gangly and ungraceful and the touch rough against my face. I love you you say and you turn up your lips and I stare at your eyes and they are beautiful but there is nothing in them. Well, you say. Aren’t you going to say anything.

I turn my head and hang my hair forward like a curtain separating us greasy and in knots. I need to smoke I say and you frown because that’s the wrong answer of course but you hand me a cigarette anyway and light it too, cupping your hand around the flame unnecessarily. I take a drag and you take it from my fingers but you don’t put it to your lips you just hold it there delicately like the faintly smoldering ember end might set you on fire. Don’t you love me you say and I take back the cigarette. Yes, I say and inhale. Of course.