Prose

You sleep in the arms of gravity because he makes you feel safe.
He holds you so tightly that you can’t draw a full breath. His kisses—oh,
he presses his mouth to the side of your neck
and drinks a long stream of heartbeats and then kisses you,
the taste of your pulse still lingering on his lips.
You hover above him a moment and then let yourself fall—
and falling into him is like falling through a deep space,
your weight dressing itself in rushing air,
mercury stars rising and rising in the wake of your heat.
And yet even this fall is safe.
He spreads himself like a sea beneath you and catches you, always.
His hands fill the space between your shoulder blades, where the absence of wings is most noticeable.
In his arms you can rest and dream of nothing,
the taste of his pulse still lingering on your lips.
So you stay with him.
You do not realize that you could leave at any time.
And you want to leave, after a while. He hurts you.
The women who love gravity have the marks of his hands all over their bodies.
Fallen breasts, skin cracked into sunbursts like glass.
They tell no one.
They hide the marks.
They stay.
Some women have left him.
They have pried themselves from his embrace and walked away.
He begs them. He throws his arms around their ankles and pleads with them.
I am nothing without you, he says. You told me you would never leave me.
But the women walk away and do not look back.
The rest of us are not brave enough.
We stay with him.
We drown our hands inside his hands, we braid our body with his body,
and we tell him we will never,
ever leave him.