i once knew the corporeality of you like i knew the back of my hand. after all, i'd spent endless minutes memorizing the feel of your skin on my fingertips. any perturbations dissolved when i felt the warmth of you, how soft your bare back was, and how you got goosebumps every time i brushed my lips across that freckle on your shoulder. i knew faultlessly where to touch you every time. i'd become familiar with the way your body moved, learned the secrets of how to fill the manifestation of your drive. i knew every tangible inch of you by heart; you were an instrument i'd learned to play in a perfervid manner.
but i always apprehended our ephemeral relationship itself in a visceral sense. in the atmosphere of your bedroom, you were always unapologetically aphrodisiac, but in the mornings you'd be cold to the touch. we indulged in a pernicious love; it'd always been clear we didn't belong together. i got lost in my perpetual desire to learn you in more intimate ways, to study your darkest thoughts and see who you really were inside. i wanted to unravel your cerebration and put down roots so i could be an occupant of your psyche.
where i once sought catharsis, i only found an unfathomable vacuity closing the small distance between us. i never loved you because i never had the chance to know you past the physical makeup of your being, but i know we had a potential i'll never find again.

when my lips bump clumsily against his neck, i recall the delicate way i'd let mine linger on yours. i'm caught in a false sense of ignominy; i'm paranoid strangers look at me and see remnants of your touch and the virulence that you leaving left on me. i know this is irrational because the last time you touched me was a lifetime ago, but still, the rough feel of his skin and the absence of a freckle on his left shoulder never fail to put me in a nostalgia. i can still recall the way you felt as if it were only yesterday.