you think with your lungs
and breathe with your heart.

every day we begin a war.
we are the staunchest allies,
the most formidable of foes.
i fight to clear you a path.
you fight free of my shadow.

my mind is a river
with predictable course
and clear motivation.
your mind is the sun:
draped with golden flares,
burning even when unseen,
powered by something cosmic.

you say you see silver
out of the corner of your eye.
i don't tell you what i know:
you see the stars that one day
you will conquer.

no matter how many times i fall,
by my mistake or someone's push,
i will rise again.

i'll rise with blood staining the ground;
with the taste of iron on my lips;
with the knowledge that
you can't fool me twice -

and when i rise...
castles will crumble beneath my fists.
oceans will rush to greet my blood,
for my body and the sea
share the same kind of power.
i'll pour magma onto the cities
and build them anew.

after the fall,
i will be better than before,
and the ones who pushed me down
will be nothing more than
faces in a crowd.

perhaps i should thank them.
without my collapse
i would not have remade
myself or the world.

FIRST: the backstabbers. "trust is so easily broken."
// her eyes are not windows to the soul, but to the galaxy. her skin, when examined with care, holds twelve million maps of stars, all lightyears away. the isoceles triangle of freckles on the hip bone are you. the delicate scars on the inner wrist are her.
// "i will find you," you tell her, one among other promises whispered to her skin that you have no way to keep. you memorize the outer scars of her inner soul. "***** gravity."

SECOND: the victims. "give until there's nothing left."
// she ***** you dry. she is no vampire. no, not a vampire; a succubus does not feed on something as mundane as blood. every time you fall in love with her, she digs her fingernails into your skin and drains it right out of you. and you can't help but fall in love again, and again, and again, until you are a withered husk of a being. you are someone who died too many times and no amount of electric lust can save you now.

THIRD: the soulmates. "you love too deeply. it will destroy you."**
// you hurt each other, yes, but no one else has the antidote to this particular poison, and that's okay. he completes you, and you him. seventeen times he's told you he loves you and you match him for each one. your love for him cannot outpace his for you, nor vice versa.
// then there is an accident, a hospital room, a marble stone with an epitaph that's not right, and you crumble under the weight of all that love.

i wear nothing but my words
somehow, they hide me from you
better than any mask
i've had before

maybe you are afraid
to look beneath