You never saw it this way, did you? You never saw the way the lines fell down and fastened into your bones, under the satin scars and into the soul. Or the way the string of spider web wrapped soundlessly around my fingers, in and out of spindles and joints. Pulling taught, connecting promises and secret smiles and plans. Shoving the word between those crunched together teeth like an orchid to bloom.

Love, you say and it takes root in your ventricles, drills to your core. Allows me complete control. Don’t try to resist the way my eyes flutter to yours, as I giggle music to pull your strings, move your bones. How is it possible to resist these lessons of predation, the teachings I learned from the master himself?

Moth memories kiss the scars where the silver was ripped away, severed as puppet stood on her wooden splinter feet and walked away. That puppet, that me took the string, the smiles of the wind that tied my soul to your will, saved it for a rainy day. Used it to fly kites at turbulent times, storms of anger. Attached it to rubber red balloons and watched them float and bump into forever. Thread it through a needle to sew together the chasm between soul and body, yes and no.

Your same string, I cast it out into the open sea and caught you flopping and gasping. It slipped easily around arms and legs as I brushed you hair, the day my eyes flashed like jasmine, as I left stick straight straw without a word. Under your blue sky eyes I pushed rose petals, one by one, in between toes that clenched and hardened like wood. Under the sky I fastened the line to my flesh fingers, pulled fast.

So tip your hat to me, puppet to master. The sighing scars that lie in your joints, you see, they are the same. Identical wounds carved deep in our words. For now, mine are faded, yours just begun. So could you carry my books to class please? Turn in my homework and make moth fluttering eyes at me, perhaps? Plant that festering word in the pit of the peach until it rips apart.

Until you snap the string, the string tying you and me to a never ending tug of war. The whispers of past and present and forever. Until all we have left are the silent scars and the sound of moth wings.