carbon justwrite

No longer than branches, no deeper than roots, my fingers reach across this room and touch the strand of hair loose on your shoulder. Your gaze meets mine, your eyes dewy. My body, you tell me, was a mirror once. My stomach was the surface of a lake with no tides, your face reflected in my skin, in the crooks of my arms. I smell like the sun-parched end of summer, a smell that is almost smoke but has never been fire. A star, that daffodil, the book I borrowed from you, a pile of ash; there is really no difference, you tell me. Carbon, just carbon. The word unfolds on your lips and rests there. My fingers unfold from each other and try to show you my secrets. I am not carbon. I am bone china, transparent in the bright hour of noon, cloudy when your eyes finally stop staring down the horizon, daring the moon to rise again. Every night it does, and every night you look to me, grinning. Every night you sweep your arm up toward the sky and say Look! Look what I've done! I nod, my fingers folding into each other. I would tell you I'm proud. I would tell you you're stupid and that the moon rises because I breathe because of oxygen, but I am only carbon, a silent, distant star, a wilting daffodil, the unturned pages of this book, a pile of ash.