Give Me a Break

Let’s kiss in an empty park at two in the morning when I’m freezing in my skinny jeans and you’re hips are pressed too tight against my thighs. Let’s talk about work and Haley and how much you loved her and how it’s okay that she doesn’t love you anymore. Let’s act like that’s an acceptable way of dealing with a broken heart because it’s certainly better than you drinking on the bedroom floor. Let’s climb on top of the playground and stumble down the mist coated slide and fall on top of each other in a mangled mess of limbs and psychotic giggles. Let’s lie in the sand and stare up at the stars and wonder if we watched them long enough, if we’d see them gazing back.
Let’s wander aimlessly through the streets and silently acknowledge that your lips on mine don’t mean anything beyond you being too dramatic and me being too hypocritical for my own sanity. Let’s talk about how much we’ve been together to experience and how much we’ve been apart for. How I’ll never know what Haley’s kiss tastes like and you’ll never know what my father’s hand felt across my cheek bones.
The night will taste thick and heavy on our tongues and shadows will wrap themselves like blankets against the street lights. We’ll balance drunken feet along the curbs and kick beer bottles through tree top goal posts. Let’s descend upon an open bar where the lights are dim and make your eyes glow red and I’ll miss the blue tint along your pupils.
Let’s order a whiskey and crack the ice between our teeth so they shatter like the plates you threw from our window. We’ll toss the caramel liquid down our throats and complain about women who shriek with a laughter that cuts at our ears. We’ll listen to bad pick up lines and smell worse cologne, hear mindless conversations and wonder why we can’t be as happy as they always look. We’ll watch everyones highlight reel and work through our bloopers, debating if the script is too cliche.
At the end of the night, let’s stumble back, your arms clinging to my hips and you lips at the base of my neck, testing a water you’ve dived into before. But maybe the temperatures changed, the water’s run cold and filled with sea monsters in the time you’ve been away. You’ll dip you toes into the current, feel it gently beat against your skin, and you’ll sink a little deeper, inch a little closer to the pebble laden bottom and you’ll wonder if it’s the right decision.
You’ll gasp in resistance of the cold when the current pushes you against an alleyway wall, fish glinting like window glass in the yellow moon glow of a street light. You’ll shiver against the cold and seaweed will wrap its fingers around your wrist, pin you to the wall, and rub salt water across your lips. It’ll taste like late nights of skinny jeans and bruises shaped like fingertips along my shoulders, and you’ll shiver at their freezing fingers when the mermaids work down the zipper of your pants.
Let’s lose our breath and watch the oxygen drained bubbles rise up to kiss the skyscrapers, see them shimmer against the stars. Let’s grasp at starfish caked to alleyway walls, thick with grime and bad decisions, and you can use my belt loops as an anchor against the rapids dashing past in blurs of red taillights and middle fingers. We’ll sink into sea foam, white bubbles rising from our edges as you dissolve into the sand. I’ll hear your voice echo like the ocean in trashcan sea shells as you moan into the black sand, taste the grime along your irregular breath. You’ll feel crabs and seahorses kissing at the bare skin between you shirt and your belt and in the moment before you fade into the waves, you’ll choke out my name in my ear, chipped and broken.
One the walk home, let’s pretend I don’t still taste salt in the corner of my mouth. Let’s not touch each others hand and let’s not talk about anything important. Let’s walk in straight, sober lines, and tug at low hanging branches. Let’s fiddle with our keys at the base of our apartment and think for a moment that we lost our wallets. Let’s stumble up up up the stairs and barely get the door open. Let’s fall onto the couch, onto separate ends, still not touching, and let me mumble something about going to our room. Let you say that’s too much energy but I can go if I want, I can leave you there and you can not come lie with me and that could be fine.
And I’ll go. Let me rise from the cushions to haphazardly make my way down the hall, and when I shut the door to our room, let me hear your disappointed sigh ringing out across the beach. Let me pretend I didn’t hear it. Let me go to sleep with the scent of your hair gliding off the other pillow. Let me dream of you and your drunken words, how you said you loved me when you fell down in the alley, how your hands shook when I got your pants off, how I whispered that you needed to breathe when I could feel your heartbeat racing in your thighs like your eyes raced around the stars above you.
Let me dream of you and forget how you can be so cruel without meaning to, how you can be heartless and cold. Let me forget my fathers hands upon my shoulders and how sometimes you hold me the way he used to. Let me remember how your voice shakes when your drunk and how your laughter brings out the speckles in your eyes. Let me forget why you scare me, how much you hold of my heart and how fragile I am in your hands. Let me instead remember how you would do the same for me, how you have done the same. Let me remember your soft words against my frightened heart. Let me dream and forget and remember and let that be enough to get us through an evening where angel fish swam like birds amongst the trees and the moon became a clam shell.