At the touch of our fingertips I’d taste orange zest.

The bitter sugar dissolving on my taste buds created a home on my tongue.

The rest of my mouth would go numb,

My cheeks, teeth, and lips would suddenly vanish and orange zest would become my breath.

From his voice, a baritone frenzy of warmth and comfort, I’d see yellow.

A corn harvest, aureate nuggets of sweet treasure.

It’s a deep dijon, a halo of buoyant rays that stretch for miles.

Fallen petals that still manage to maintain their shade of a blazing tuscan sun.

And now our touch triggers my tongue to lyse into fountains of blood.

A crimson coating drapes my cheeks in tarnished copper and iron,

I taste only the bitterness, the zest of human skin harvested by my fingernails,

with his touch I taste sour madness and fear. An homage to what I felt when he touched me.

And now in his voice, I only see murk, darkness.

A black void of necromancy, the black that I saw when my impulse to fly shut my eyes

when he touched me.

Sometimes I dream of orange zest and yellow, but it’s not the same.

Because now I can’t touch him or hear his voice.