It has never been as difficult as it is tonight to leave your side. I watch my heart stretch like pizza cheese, like chewing gum. One half lodged inside my chest and the other half stuck to a stray lock of your hair. It will not break; a muscle of steel.

You are walking away now towards the beach. You are entering the sea who is a thirsty lover and my heart is coming apart somewhere between one AM in a city in the south Asian subcontinent and an ocean that doesn’t recognize the taste of my blood on its hands.

Come into the room and peel yourself out of your wet swimsuit. Leave it on the floor and bring the ocean with its weeds, starfish, and sand crystals fingerprinted on your skin, into my bed and into my arms. Your skin will be the archive of all love made, past and present, between our bodies.

You brought the sea into our room. Sand and salt on the floor, in the sheets. Your sleeping golden body held fast and still against my chest. “I feel how good you are. From here on, you are going to live inside my skin.”