Something about his small sharp eyes, the way he throws his head back and laughs a deep belly laugh. Just out of delight. Makes me want to dig into him. Excavate. The sky could be purple outside and I wouldn't see it if I walked out under it. My focus lies pinpointed, in him, whether it's favorable, charmed or unsure. Yet this is not a love story. He entices me, catches a corner as I pull away, longing. I know this game, and I'll pull away further. After maybe just one night.

The sky it turns out, the color it turns as day fades and sets, light skewed through atmosphere to create my spectacle, is the connection I can't sacrifice. I have before, gone for months on end, unable to see the stars, forgetting entirely that they were there, on our ceiling that is, not just transposed onto his body, constellations of freckles as my north star. Unable to feel the grass beneath my bare feet, fingers hungrily running instead through hair, my seasons ebbed and flowed between haircuts and postures, the sun setting as I mourned his momentary losses: leaving for work as I went to hibernate, fall asleep quickly and the sooner you'll wake.

I forgot entirely the majesty of a darkened sky. How, out underneath it, walking alone, how bright it actually is still. I've walked before at night, picking out shapes, navigating perfectly and fully embraced alone in that vaccuous womb, my trust realigning, expanding, wiggle-room forged between my subsets, the value to hold it all in place collapsing sweetly, and thinking "is it really in fact night? Where is this light coming from? Who, now, is illuminating my path?"

I'll never again return indoors or flick on an artificial light, squinting over text obscured by barriers when it's provided for, and in such abundance, just two feet away, just one window pane's separation. I might dream of you, but I can't return. You must understand, you hold yourself elsewhere, too deeply hidden, that to conjoin, I'd have to journey inwards and forego the changing sky I've become so attached to. And which asks for nothing in return. No door can be closed in my face, no corridors blocked from my view and footprints where there is no plaster and frames.

My home, where things make the only sense to me, is in the expanse. This I can navigate, here I can see where abandoned bones go and how roots grow. This I can navigate. But I will come in if you invite me. For a night. Because warmth, even from a furnace, still heats my skin.

This cycle ends, as others do, as a welcome respite and a clean slate. My chalice tips and spills its wine, a reminder to let down the weights loosen my grip and loosen my tights. To lose hold of the responsibility to uphold life. This I can witness, these cycles I can witness not as deaths and births, losses and burdens but as cycles, a mere rotation. And far from the last or the only, although a different meaning can be derived from saturation, a subsuming more tangible, so a pruning of the fingers can be seen and felt more clearly. Diving into a pool that can be dried to echo a pool larger it's easier to forget. This cycle ends, as the others do, to expose itself as just that. A reminder that I can partake without generating, live exist and feel without producing, speaking and creating. My contribution is irrevocable. In my anatomy and my potential is the sole purpose to create, at some point to say something, inevitable day light allowing me to bask and languish in the dark. Expand, exhale. And drain.