My Dark Comet, My Shadow

I am discovering how it feels to want myself the way a mouth wants water, urgent, necessary, trembling. I press my palms to my own skin and feel the heat I've been searching for in all the wrong bodies. My shadow pools beneath me like spilled wine, dark and intoxicating, and I lower myself into it, tasting the parts of me I was taught to swallow down. Here, in this golden light, I am both hunger and feast. There is a comet burning through my ribs, and I let it. I let myself be consumed by my own fire, let my hands map every scar, every softness, every place I've hidden from the world. I am learning the cartography of my own longing. The flowers around me bloom with their legs open to the sky, shameless, unguarded, and I bask in their honesty, of how to unfurl without apology, how to be greedy for my own touch, how to come home to myself and never leave again. I whisper my name like a prayer, like an invitation, like the first word of a love letter I'm finally ready to write. My dark comet. My shadow. My most devoted lover.