The marks on your wrists will fade, as everything fades. The heartbeat in my lips where your teeth found my flesh. The words, falling, as they did, half-formed and breathless from the wet heat of your mouth. Three words. Hitting the air beside my ear and dying as they were born. My skin against yours, stretching and binding and coiling around you. The sudden distances between us. The force as we pulled and struggled, desperately trying to reunite. The organism that we had become.
All of this will fade.
And how will I remember you, lover, once your scent no longer clings to my clothes? How will I feel for you, in the dark, alone, once these stab wounds of memory glow red, and crumple, and twist into nothing? And what if these memories have already begun to merge, to melt into liquid, into air? What then? Do I cling to them, bind them in silk? Capture them, these bleeding moments, and pin them to the ground? I try, but they slide and stain my hands, washing your smell from my palms, wiping clean the fingers that turned your face away from mine.
Afterwards, as the sun crept up under the blinds and the sounds of morning shook the hush of night from their backs, you shifted and woke and turned to face me. A tear slid from your eye and drew an arch across your cheek. If all else fades, as I know now that it will, I hope that this memory is the last to flutter and collapse. The light in the room dressing you in autumnal robes, your dreams still clinging to the pillow, still sticking to your lips, more real than any memory could ever seem.
My lover, oceans away from everything we might have been, counting stars and satellites, waving me ashore.