they never tell you how it stays inside you

they tell you how it'll creep up and over you--
an enticing corruption--
and how it'll change how you see how you smell how you
feel
and how when you fall it'll catch you and hold you tender
for a while

they tell you how the sun will shine brighter
and the words will taste
sweeter
and how every morning songbird and ocean tide and sigh
will whisper their name
until your cursing sparrows and drowning in your own saltwater because
they told you how it would hurt

they tell you how it'll end because god it will end and
it'll end with you
counting down the infinite ways you believe you could have fixed it
but you couldn't have
and you will learn that

but god forbid they tell you how it will stay with you

because if they don't promise you I will--
that every new heart won't wipe the slate clean
and you will find yourself listening to that godforsaken song again
or driving down that
road
just for the sake of feeling like ****
and if you happen across another soul with the same cursed name you
will shudder--and for a moment
you're fourteen,seventeen,twenty,again

and you will hurt
and you will be okay

but it will stay with you, it will
each love carried in you like a dormant illness waiting for the trigger