Cataclysm in repose

love is all around, I’m growing tired of fighting
I’ve been drained, and I can’t hide it

-Aftermath, Muse

The lighter flicks once more, lighting up the contour of his jaw, the stubble lined, shadows sticking to his skin. I stare at the wonder of his eyelashes, catching the motes of dust, the laughter lines running, rivers tracing routes for sorrows to flow in trying times. Tears don’t become men the way they do women, but he was an exception. In the way his eyes shone, sorrow seemed to manifest, as if he was the creator of sadness and to think of him without tears would be absurd.

If you saw him laugh, you’d think he could do nothing else. The way his mouth twisted, mirth stretching across his skin, as if laughter was created just to sit on his tongue, to resonate through the ringing of this throat.

He was music, I could feel his skin sing under my fingertips, his muscles coiling as he lay asleep. Even when he was knocked out of his senses, a sliver of drool connecting him to the snow white pillows, a smidgen of reality in the dreams he conjured with his sheer presence.

He was the aftermath, the calm after the storm. He was morning after, the devastation, the calculation, the heaviness of the end, and the lightness of the beginning. He was a crossroad, sleeping peacefully on my bed, wrecking havoc with his violence.