I tried to strip myself of hair
In the gentlest way I knew possible
By suffocating it

But I botched it, I was left with a mess of pin-***** edges
And straight, sharp lines dividing the offending limbs from their feet
Cut here.

In a similar way
I still love you
Despite my smothering efforts. Their result a testament to how static this is.

And I can’t keep trying.

Why can I be uncompelled for the majority of my time
Convincing myself that I can love others I can love others I can love others
Yet you elicit heat blooms in the very pit of my bud stomach if you just look at me fondly.

I need to stop blossoming to you, my stem is cut and I only have so much time

I used to believe that love made you beautiful
That you couldn’t help but act upon the world with more grace and instinct faeth
Than was previously thought possible because of it

Now I experience that it does not. I have shrivelled and become less of myself – like my mother will I look upon pictures in the years to come, retrospect and think
“I was ill, then.”

Because with every flicker you remain integral and I used to think that I loved you because you made me feel greater than my frame, made me feel better, desirable, desiring of the world and succulent amongst the leaves and limbs of my arms, hands and feet

But I still hitch for you now even though my skin has honeycombed and the nectar has dimmed and eaten away at my eyes and lips – I was not compelled to love you because you made me feel beautiful, but because you were beautiful and I only felt the afterglow and mistook it for a light that was shone with purpose. I loved you because you were beautiful, and I forgot that I wasn’t.

I love you because you are beautiful, and I recall that I am not.

Or is it perhaps because

Even when confronted with something so utterly necessary as you

                 I feel the need for you to be reduced to a concept

Because at my origin

I know I only deserve my abstracts.

And you are always too clear

And your mind grew like
a tiny maze, with many
dead ends packed in there

It’s been at least three
Full moons since I gave and I
Haven’t stopped bleeding

They couldn’t help but
Crack the maws of those around
Them who became touched