Writer Kris Kidd and Cameron Lee Phan, Los Angeles

Tangled in my sheets and lying on your back, I watch you turn to greet the soft light of a sun that has just begun to rise. Your body is still asleep, but your mind is so awake. I keep a box of photos by my bedside, relics of the ancient civilizations of me, Incarnations of self like all of the cities I’ve set fire to— and I show them to you sparingly. Photos of the life I lived before you, back when I had bruised lips and hips and knees that knocked when I walked. Back when everything in my life was a habitual as breathing. And I have never been too easily satiated. Things that take a little with others seem to take a lot with me. I’ve spent the formative years of my youth wondering why nobody told me growing up would be so hard. A master at placing the blame, I’ve been running in circles and howling at a starless sky.

I’m spending the final years of my youth wondering why nobody told me falling in love could be so easy. An amateur at real feelings, I am breaking down my walls and my thick skin, howling at the moon in Texas. I am far from that person now. Rolling over in the morning, twisting in my slutty white sheets, I pull you closer and I am far nearer to the person I could be.

That magic, it’s a head rush. It’s a high that the drugs can’t match. A dream of elsewhere, I can feel it in my bones and my heart. It’s a lot like happiness. It’s a lot like hope. It reminds me of the last glowing ember of a yet another city in dust at the end of summer. Hot winds and habitual hauntings. A sixteen-hour dream state that breeds a new kind of fire. It’s one of those things you can feel but can’t see. Like wind. Like love. Like ghosts. Text by Kris Kidd and Photo by Matt Lambert

Photos by Max Lambert

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