tired methaphors

the young man stares at the wall, murmurs something soft about never being able to run barefoot through the meadows again because nap time has passed and so has childhood, and it grips something inside me i didn't know could still ache.

there are faint lines now etched into the parchment of his face, a whisper of retreat at the edges of his hair. he smells like musk and sleep and a memory you didn't mean to remember.

he stares around the dining table like it betrayed him. he searches for his grandfather's crooked smile, but when he realizes the chair is empty, he screams. the others shake their heads, "what a spoiled child," they whisper, not knowing how grief can rot slowly in a man who still remembers warm soup and sunday radio.

he flinches at the sound of raised voices, sharpened syllables. he hears them as fists. he still remembers how he begged the old man and woman to stop - to unlock doors, to stop the bruises. "let me out of here," the memory pleads. the house, now silent, never replies.

he stares at his hands. sometimes they tremble. once, they were held in the market to keep him from getting lost. now, they only remind him of where the devil touched him at fourteen.

he brushes his teeth until the gums bleed, as if mint foam could erase satan's breath, that mouth like smoke, that kiss called pure, called nothing, called innocence. he swears, "it didn't mean anything, right?" and i say nothing, because he's already rewritten it in softer ink.

he says he no longer carries the dark - that he left it there in the sink, blood spiraling down the drain like an offering. he called for god. god didn't answer. he asked if it was a crime. the silence said, "no, it was love."

but then he leans in - closer - and whispers he misses the bleeding. he misses being ruined, because healing makes him feel too unworthy.

he tells me about a secret with a grin that doesn't reach his eyes - he keeps his portrait in the attic. keeps it untouched by hands or time, while the basement below him groans with the weight of all the bodies he's buried inside.

he covers the woman in his bed each morning. she sleeps beside him, faceless. he tells me they've always been together. that they mirror one another. that he thinks her eyes are the same as his.

he asks me, "how can i be a man - mature, steady, desirable - when i still cry like a dog whenever someone yells too loudly?"

i close my eyes. his voice is static. he's too much - a cathedral collapsing in slow motion.

i stand. he watches me go with those same pleading eyes that begged the old man and woman to unlock the door. i don't have the key.

maybe we'll meet again. in the far-left corner of this ruined coffee shop. in a new body. in a softer dream. but tonight - tonight he disgusts me.

not because he's broken. but because he's still speaking in the voice of the child who never got out of the burning house.