ulcers flowers veterans and gods

the reds and whites of valentines are sickeningly sweet and when i say sweet i mean they carve ulcers into my throat they burn through the soft tissue of my thoughts they spit acid into my brain and expect me to neutralize it with nothing but a mouthful of water and a shaking prayer. 

9th grade was quite like valentines the way i stood there like an abandoned mutt waiting (pleading) patiently (desperately) calmly (hysterically) for you to turn your head and see me. i do not blame you but i do blame myself for the way i waited for the kindness of a god i never believed in.

the most terrible fate of a curse is that it too is doomed to witness the light over the horizon. the sun will always rise. the tide will always come back in. and we too were unfortunately destined to be together. i do not say unfortunately because i regret you i say unfortunately because your presence in my orbit makes my ribs splinter inward because your existence defies the most basic laws of survival. humans are meant to settle to fold into the comfort of routine to wake up to the same breakfast the same commute the same face in the mirror until their bones give out and they are buried six feet deep with a nameplate that no one will visit. only the rich have souls only the poets have voices only the stupid fall in love like this and i am stupid i am utterly and devastatingly stupid and i do not know how to be anything else when you look at me.

i do not want a small love. i do not want something i can fold neatly into my pocket and carry like loose change. i want love that splits the sky open like a scream. i want love that shatters glass, that leaves bruises, that tastes like blood on my tongue. i want love that is big enough to make flowers weep. i want love that is big enough to break me.

it is a most terrible pity that you have given me more joy than the afterlife could ever fathom. it is tragic in the most theatrical way that you are so terribly irreplaceable that i am but a marionette strung together with the sound of your voice and the curve of your mouth. you could move me with the flick of a wrist and i would go willingly.

there are not many things i hold the privilege of calling mine the words that i speak the choices that i make have been made before traced over rewritten in hands steadier than mine i am but a husk in the grand scheme of things a body moving through the motions a voice repeating a script

i think if you told me to break my own hands i would. if you asked me to cut open my arteries and hold out my heart like an offering i would. it would not be romantic it would not be poetic it would just be the way the story goes.

because what else is there to do with love but let it wreck you. what else is there to do with love but give it up like a lung in a battlefield, like a bullet to the chest, like a dying bird praying to a god that does not answer. what else is there to do with love but make it ruin you.

love is a war crime love is a sickness love is a fever that won’t break love is looking at you and knowing that i would set fire to everything i have ever known if it meant you would stay for another hour another minute another second.

sometimes i think love is a scalpel and i am lying on the table waiting for you to carve me open. i think love is a wound and i am pressing my fingers into it just to feel something just to prove to myself that it still hurts. sometimes i think love is a dogfight and i am crawling through the wreckage just to find you just to make sure you are still breathing just to make sure you haven’t left me behind.

you are the worst thing that has ever happened to me. you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. you are the disease and the cure you are the hand around my throat and the oxygen in my lungs you are the reason my bones feel too tight inside my body.

some nights i dream of you and wake up gasping like i’ve been drowning for years. some nights i wake up choking on your name like it’s a mouthful of saltwater, like it’s something i was never meant to hold in my mouth for too long. some nights i do not sleep at all because the thought of you burns too brightly behind my eyes and i am afraid of what will happen if i close them.

how i have spent so much time trying to put distance between us, trying to convince myself that i am whole without you, that i do not need you like lungs need air, like wounds need salt, like fire needs something to consume. it’s funny how no matter how far i run, i always find my way back to you.

this is not devotion this is not worship this is not some grand declaration of love. this is survival. this is my body recognizing you as something vital, something necessary, something it cannot exist without.

here i am. hands open. throat bared. ribcage cracked wide like a door you never quite bothered to close behind you. i do not ask you to love me. i only ask that you do not leave me in the dark.

because i do not think i could survive it.

because i do not think i would want to.

this is the part where i tell you i love you.

this is the part where i tell you it is a most terrible thing.

this is the part where i tell you that if i had to choose between heaven and your hands on my face i would choose you every single time.

i sigh your name, and wearily,

happy valentines day sweetheart.

love is a gunfight and i am unarmed but you press your lips to my temple and call it a ceasefire. love is a train barreling toward me and i do not move because your hands are on my shoulders, steady, warm, something like a promise. love is an open wound and you kiss it anyway, mouth to blood i think if i was dying you would hold my face in your hands and tell me i was beautiful. i think if the sky split open you would stand beside me and watch the world burn like it was nothing but another sunrise.

you are something that will rot me from the inside out. and i do not care. i would drink you down like poisoned honey, i would let you carve your name into my skin and call it devotion. you ruin me in the softest way possible, in the kind of way that makes me thank you for it.

love is you smiling at me like i am worth something, like i am whole, like i am not just a mess of trembling hands and bitten lips and too many words i am too afraid to say. love is your name caught between my teeth like a prayer i do not believe in but whisper anyway.

if this is what dying feels like, let me die like this. fingers tangled in yours, my heart in your hands, my mouth forming the shape of your name even as the lights go out.