I shake from the words I have read and cannot unread. Her words poetically sounding out the depth of an affection only a lion could know. A fierce kind of love that ripped right through you. She loved you like a storm loves to be chaotic. Won you over with talk of dreams that engulfed your imagination more so than any other lover before.
I know that kind of love. I have felt it in my heart and in my loins. I have lost count of the nights spent howling at the moon, broken and consumed by such a love. Felt demolished by it. Would have died for it. And did, in a way, many times.
I question if anything will ever taste that way again and if not, would it even be worth the bite. But to think like this is pointless. I could spend my whole life waiting for that kind of love to come again. Perhaps it was just never meant to last forever, as I wished it had. I mean, could a fire burn that bright for the rest of a lifetime. Could you live with the burns.
So I look at you now and you say you’re fine. You tell me tales of how that love was toxic. How it was never built to last. Yet I feel inside that you still think of it. Pine for it. Perhaps in the same way that I think of him and wonder if he ever pines for me, for my poetic love.
I think of her and of you and what it must be like to now be with me, in the same way that I think of him and how he is and who he might now be loving. It seems I am the child of all my broken hearts and yet, sometimes I am filled with concern that I may never love you the way that she did. Don’t we all deserve the fire. Don’t we all deserve the flames.
I love you like a soft breeze. Gentle and able. It grows, slowly and there are doubts. It’s an honest kind of love. You said to me we were like two people learning to eat salad after years of burgers. Is this what other people feel when they’re in love. It’s been so long since I’ve had a stable kind of love, I really can’t remember.
In truth, maybe I’ve never had a stable kind of love. Only broken plates and screams. Tears on street corners that faded into rain. Walking out of my way just in case I get to see them. Handwritten letters in handmade envelopes, posted in mailboxes and found by lovers other than me.
They called it crazy, I said it was love.
I think we all want the storm though. I think we all want to be torn apart by the passion of someone else’s desire. For our heart, our mind, our body. For someone to look at us like they’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel. For them to hold us in a death grip made up of a future so grand it would be impossible to let go.
I wonder if we could ever have that with each other, or whether it’s an instantaneous kind of thing. Have we been so burned that we won’t allow ourselves the fall. Jaded by the disappointing endings that followed on from such firework starts. Stuck in a romance novel that finished several chapters ago, but we can’t put it down.
In truth, I don’t think our love story inspires you. I’m unconvinced that my body’s curves make you wish they were full of your DNA. I believe you could survive without me. I imagine you write lists of all my faults inside your journals, as you have no doubt done with others gone before.
Or perhaps, we will just accept that I will never be her and you will never be him. Perhaps we will simply be us, loving at a temperature that keeps us warm enough all year.