"sanctuary. i look up the word after a particularly rough morning, and my favorite definition was simply “ a holy place”. now i don’t believe in god, and i know you don’t either, but there’s something holy about the way our bodies glide against each other when we’ve had a bit too much to drink, and maybe it’s not holy in your mind, and maybe it’s just fucking, but to me it feels like sanctuary, feels like there’s nothing else in the world that’s gonna harm me when i’m in your altar arms, and i’ll worship the bruises you leave unconditionally on my frail, sickly skin always, always. til the end of the line, till all that turns of this city has been washed away in rain or heat, and everyone’s given up on going to heaven, i’ll die knowing i gave it all protecting you, and if my alabaster body bleeds red when you’re gone, it’s because i’m coming to love you again in hell. i think we were born together, and now that i have tasted you, we must go together as well. there is nothing else. only till the end of the line. it’s my promise to you, sanctuary boy . you call me an artist, but there is no way i can capture the image of you i see on paper with a piece of black charcoal you worked two shifts to afford for me, and i’ll try to manifest the only picture of the god i remember onto these pages, but i’m afraid even that wouldn’t do you justice. you have golden wreaths in your earth hair, and you have something that’s the closest thing to love i know flowing in those sweetheart brown eyes, and you smell like giving in and coming home and the best parts the ocean and you taste like sugar liquor and lipstick. you leave me breathless always. i’ve never read a single bible verse in my entire life but, when you’re fucking me into streams of holy litany falling from your lips and hitting my bony collarbones, and my ladder ribs, and i’m gasping your name as if it’s the only thing keeping me alive, and we’re both sinning in this way together, forever, promising things we both know we can’t have, oh my fucking lord, i see religion in you. you look at me like i’m sunshine, but i wish i could tell you sometimes that you’re my entire solar system, but it doesn’t look like my collapsing lungs can ever get the words out. “I love you”, you burn warmer than a fire ever will, and all i want is for us to kiss in daylight one day. but this love will never be convenient, when every winter is war, and the summers are suffocating. you tell me that holding hands is pulling grenades and touching lips are bashing heads, and i see the blood for myself, so much blood, in the both of us, driving our love to the ground, so we can only fuck when you can’t see my eyes because maybe then you’ll have to say “I love you too” to a statement neither one of us can admit to. because in this era, it feels more like a death sentence than sanctuary, and even though i know there’s nothing safer than my place beside you, i know there’s nothing more dangerous."