The diagnosis is love but it feels more like dying.
You’re under my skin now. I should’ve kept my distance,
but you were an exploding star and I’ve always had
a soft spot for hopeless things.

You, the smoke filling my lungs and the shrapnel
embedded between bones and blood vessels.
You took my body over like a cancer. A silent killer.
First the eyes, when I saw the black hole in you that
wanted to swallow my light.

Then my brain. You infected every neuron with this thing
called hope, like maybe I could love you. Like we could fill each
other and stop feeling so empty. By the time it spread to my
heart, my body felt ready for the morgue.

I’m killing myself with loving you. And I know it sounds crazy,
but pretty much anything can make sense if you love
someone enough. There is a lesson here. Now I know why
they tell you not to look down from tall heights.

Falling to your death must seem so romantic from a
rooftop right under the stars. We don’t build skyscrapers
to get close to God, we build them to remind us that the
only difference between living and dying is gravity.

Does it make sense to say that life is a burning building
and we’re all trying to find the fastest way out? Racing to throw
ourselves out of windows and forgetting to grow wings
for the way down.

I have a sixth sense about these things.
You tasted like disaster the first time we kissed, a little bit
like a dangerous tragedy. But I didn’t think you’d be the death of me.
I couldn’t get you out of my system if I tried, but I’m not trying.

Virus of the heart. You are rusting in my bloodstream,
inventing sicknesses my body does not understand
how to fight. There are worse things, I suppose,
to die for than love.