ecchymosis

With my hands in the ocean
With my hands in the ocean
With my hands in the ocean, I pay
I pray, oh, I pray

"Tick Tock" by Joji

 

There's something about you that reminds me of him. You look as if you haven't slept in days, shadows under your eyes, scrunched like the pinched edges of a dumpling. There's something compellingly handsome there, in a way that makes me want to smear dirt across your face. Something about you recalls the heavy cloud of marijuana and cigarettes, back before I even knew what weed smelled like, back when bad boys were something we fantasized about in books and movies, instead of the ones with their reckless motorcycles and culturally misappropriated tattoos for whom we now have no more shits left to give. 

But I heard you before I ever saw you. I hear you sing to an ex-lover, entreating her to remember the taste of your lips, watching her from the shadows as she caresses another man. I listen to your baritone gloom unfurl in ballad after ballad, the ache pulsating like a fresh bruise, and I can only wonder who broke your heart so soundly. And that reminds me of him too, the way I should have run, I should have turned the other way, but instead the poems and the music pulled me captive, a siren dooming the sailor to drown.