let me try again
i have tried writing this a hundred times, but it doesn’t seem to come out the way i would like for it to. love doesn’t come out of me the way pain does. pain flows off the tongue, leaving burn marks on the edge of my lips, whereas love is trapped in my throat, crushing my breathing in its singular grasp. and when it realizes its attempts at getting out are futile, it melts back down into my chest where it lives and grows like a secret garden that begs to be displayed to all who will tend to it properly.
let me try again.
i want to be told how loved i am, but in small doses. if you drop me into a boiling cauldron, you will, and obviously so, burn me alive. guide me, slowly, into it and raise the temperature bit by bit until i can swim in your love rather than die from it. i am used to extremes but i am not used to love.
and i will do my best to do the same for you but i cannot promise you the world. i do not know how to love, but when i have tried to, it has always come out one way. i will love you like a cold forest: there is stillness and peace, but i am nowhere to be found. you know you are safe and cared for, but you will be the only person there.
let me try again.
the ground moves beneath my feet when you enter the room.
the walls go silent when you speak.
my hearts listens for your voice, even in a crowded, busy street.
and when it hears you, there is a spark of recognition, a shot of electric feel that runs through, jolting me through all the lifetimes that we have traveled before, my memory bank only ever holds you.
i have loved you once, twice, a couple of thousand times.
this time is no different,
but this time i am different.
and that is the problem. i am what i think i ought to be, not what i actually am. my fundamental chemistry has been removed from the equation, and i am constantly questioning what it means to be a man.
i am fabricated and i am running a misery business. so maybe that’s why i can write about love without feeling it: i’ve learned how to lie pretty fucking well. now that’s a beautiful story, isn’t it?
- n.d.