Your eyes were like the murky waters of a calm tide pool, teasing to clear up and leave one with secrets only their own eyes ever were lucky enough to perceive. I'd lie there and watch you for hours, full with fascination, past eager to see deep down into you. I waited for what seemed forever, unconsciously holding my breath far too often, determined that there was something beautiful down there. I waited for the waters to clear, but every time I thought I was beginning to have a peek deeper down, the fear in your heart would jump like a restless little fish caught in that tide pool and stir those waters up again. Over and over. I lie still, I held my breath and bit my tongue...tried so hard not to shake up your little world, hopeful things would settle and we both could see clearly...clear enough for me to understand you, and enough for you to trust. Days passed like this. You picked at me like a ravenous gull, taking all the better parts and leaving me with the rotten pieces full with nothing to offer. The joke is that I never hid from you. I left myself out in the open, during the sunset of my dying hope, and let you take what you would...as you would. You made me sweat like the smell of sea salt, bitterly beautiful. Beneath the sheets we’d writhe, together, beautifully…like mermaids under sea who’d been choked of their ability to breathe air through water. Those were the times you’d tell me secrets laced with the essence of desire, adoration, maybe even love. You’d catch your breath and hold onto me, swearing, full of lies, to never let me go…but morning came, and the sun rose over an already dead day. You tossed me out to sea, as I ignorantly wished upon the last star in the ending twilight…wished this was all some fun game, and you’d reel me in. Instead, you left me drowning and kept all the pieces of me you’d picked away, building secrets with them in memory of me, memory which you lie was never there.