When he kisses me, my mouth turns to salt.
Like the women in Ancient Rome, this is my currency.
This is how I pay him.
There are cabinets in our house filled with nothing but cracked eggs,
fat yellow yolk dripping like candle wax down the wooden insides.
When he places his palms against my sides, my ribs grow moss.
The space between my legs becomes a forest.
All along the hallway, the faucets have started leaking,
a steady trickle that gradually turns into a flood,
soaking the floorboards.
He presses teeth to my spine and it disintegrates into sawdust.
An old Greek legend speaks of a woman who was so desperate for love
that when she dove into the sea to search the depths for a man,
her entire body crumbled into fragments of coral and sea glass.
I wonder if this is what I am undergoing, this slow leaking, this slow decay.
Everything he touches, everything we share together,
is spilling and draining in a thousand different ways.
The house is collapsing on its foundations.
And the next time he kisses me, I will disappear.