Blue, White, and Crimson on the Bedspread
It starts with the rattle–a careless clatter, half a bottle spilled across tangled sheets,
colors bleeding into cotton, blue pressed against white, red rolling away to the edge.
You’re naked, face-down, mouth parted in a gasp, hair wild across the pillow like an oil slick,
I follow the trail with hungry fingers, gathering each capsule like forbidden fruit.
Every pill a new lie swallowed, a secret dissolved under tongue.
You arch when I kiss the small of your back, taste the sweat that sticks and never asks forgiveness.
My lips drag a path through wreckage, poppy-red tablets stuck to my tongue,
you moan when my hand closes on your hip, squeeze until my own knuckles ache–
is it pain, or some bastard child of desire, or just the aftertaste of whatever you just let dissolve?
We shiver together, chemical heat burning through veins,
I fuck you slow–long, mean strokes, hips grinding to the syncopation of your half-whispered curses.
All the things we can’t say, pressed between skin and poison.
The world outside fades to a memory, a dim ache, a hospital waiting room full of old ghosts.
You clutch my shoulder, nails sharp, pupils blown wide as the universe,
every thrust an answer to some question neither of us can phrase.
Capsules crunch underfoot, plastic and powder ground to dust.
You beg for something real, anything to outlast the morning.
I try to give it, or maybe I just want to bleed into you.
Tongue between your teeth, bruises flaring up like fireworks–red, then purple, then black.
We shake through it, ride the chemical tide.
There’s no love here, just the promise of release, of oblivion in borrowed heat.
The sheets grow stained with sweat and regret, crushed petals of color ground into the weave.
After, we lie in a tangle of limbs, sweat drying, the taste of copper and sugar on my lips.
You stare at the ceiling, eyes vacant, and I know you’re counting pills left in the bottle.
I gather what’s left, line them on your spine, blue-white-red.
Every pill a question, every pill a dare, every pill a promise I’m too weak to keep.
We fall asleep to the whisper of plastic rattling in the dark,
bodies spent, wounds open, color leaking across the bedspread–
no closure, no hope, only the pulse of what we swallowed to make us forget.