They ask about love
like it’s soft,
smiles,
steady hands,
sweet words.
No.
I don’t love you
for what you give.
I love you
for what it costs—
the cracks,
the hunger,
the dark you drag with you.
It’s the way you stand
like a wound still open,
breathing like it hurts,
looking at me
and nowhere at all.
I don’t want the mask.
I want the raw.
Even in silence,
even when it sickens me,
even when it tears me open—
I still love you.
You haunt my nights,
rooms you never touched.
I feel you in the air,
miss you in my skin.
To the world we were nothing.
But I know
we burned.