obediently, yet starving

Still, this isn’t a romantic poem.

It’s laced with all good things gone bad,

and unanswered prayers from unsalvageable sinners.

This is a poorly-filtered whisper of an admirer,

one that’s passed through cigarette filters and mixed spirits,

left tasting like stale smoke and bottom-shelf rum.

I wrote this with no intention other than to be true to myself;

to show you what exists outside your loud,

yet suffocatingly small bubble.

And I’m inviting a few pairs of eyes to witness it.

To keep it eternally true,

to hold it firmly enough that it becomes real.

One question before it leads to another:

what would you think if I told you I’m not writing to confront any assumptions of love,

but only to face the way your glistening smirk

bends neon lights around me?

To admit I’ve traced your silhouette in the flashing glow of a stage,

rough fingerprints on my tired brown retinas,

burnt with sweat and reverb?

Honest, I think you’d laugh.

That half-lidded, jump pitched sort of laugh that feels both sharp and warm,

like a knife dipped in honey.

And you’d look at me without really looking at me,

your eyes darting just past mine,

as though keeping the truth from touching.

You’d tap the strings once, twice,

fill the silence with your presence

as you’ve been rehearsing it for years.

Would you flinch if I said I’ve caught myself

imagining the weight of your knuckles in my mouth,

pressing against the warm roof,

drying them off with the heat of my breath

as though worship was an act of consumption?

Would it scare you to know

that I’ve studied the curve of your jaw

like a saint memorizing the relic they’d die to protect?

That I’ve mapped out your every careless lean and sighs,

your ring-filled fingers slides on the fretboard like it owns the air?

Because here’s the thing,

you don’t have to touch me for me to feel dismantled.

I could be pressed against the furthest corner of the venue,

ribs and shoulders against chipped paint and sticky beer stains,

and I’d still feel you

in the split-second after the bass hits,

in the slight tremor of your lip as you breathe between lyrics.

You’re not the kind of storm that destroys—

you’re the kind that makes the air ache before it rains.

That’s the whole point. Not to be loved back. Not to be touched.

But to dissolve into the space

between your shadow and the crowd’s roar,

where I can taste the sound of you without ever speaking.

It’s not infatuation,

though I’m sure that’s what you’d call it if you'd ever known.

It’s more like hunger;

the kind you don’t admit out loud because the moment you do,

it becomes a real thing,

with iron teeth and claws and the power to ruin.

I’ve kept mine on a leash,

let it gnaw quietly in the dark corner of my ribcage,

where only I can hear the bones cracking.

And if you’ve ever felt my eyes on you,

you’d know they weren’t asking for permission.

They were cataloging, archiving.

Turning you into something I can keep long after the lights go down, long after the noise turns into ringing, long after the crowd dissolves into the night and leaves you alone with the version of yourself you don’t let them see.

So here you are, immortalized again from the tip of my fingers.

Not as a god, not as a man,

but as the exact point where want and worship become the same thing.