Your DNA is mixed with mine on the page, but it's the tears you never shed and the saliva I can still taste in the back of my throat, invisible like the image of you in my mind now, years later. And yet here you are, everywhere and nowhere, always on the tip of my tongue and living among the words on the page, a fairytale of monsters and true love fighting to the death until no one has won.

   Medusa turns men to stone but I turn you into clay, breaking you down as. you dry in my hands, shattered because I dropped you to the floor too many times. I add water and remold you into who I always thought you could be only to discover that person is still broken no matter how many times I run my fingers over the cracks, trying to hold you together for too long.

   Your name and mine become synonyms, side by side in the dictionary of disaster and it causes me to grin every time I flip through our book. We could've burned the place to the ground but instead we chose to do it to each other, liking how the fire felt as it scorched our skin, leaving scars we'd name like the animals that came before and would come after you. Have you ever put down your lighter?

   Your breath sizzles against my neck as you say goodbye to me, a broken promise the moment you utter the words but we play pretend because that's part of the game. You'd show up in my dreams and I'd wake up drenched in sweat, the sheets still smelling of your own. When you come over that night, you swear it's the last time and I swear that you're the worst liar that I've ever met and ask you to never tell me the truth.