Red Walls And Honey-Hued Hair

Red Walls and Honey-Hued Hair

I rest the side of my head in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut trying to flatten away the insistent clatter in my head until it numbs away so I can pick out the floating traces of your voice instead: in the rain pattering against concrete, in the slow ticking of the clock hand, in my own slow breathing. 

I can picture the tilt of your mouth as you grin, the crinkle of your eyes as you laugh, brushing your hair back with your fingers as you groan at a math problem, gnawing on the tip of a borrowed pencil. 

I swallow, burying the pit of longing enlarging on the floor of my stomach.  It doesn’t help. 

I can feel the walls closing in until they explode into your favorite shade of red, the color of our future house that I see in the corners of my dreams. 

I can’t make tea, but I can see a world where I learn so I can make it for us, mixing extra honey into mine until it’s the exact hue of your hair, so we can sip away at it at the dinner table. 

The texture is too much now, too thick and overwhelming, but this seems to be the closest I’ll come to consuming you whole the way you do me.