I knew the ways you wanted me to love you
I knew all the languages of love between us
The touching, the actions, the words, emotions
I knew how that spark felt between our hearts
I knew how to whisper those words to your soul
Unfortunately, I wish I knew the languages or actions
That could have made you stayed

This phrase, so often repeated as if it were a bluff
And I used to think these words were worn
But now I see that it can’t be said enough
Even if I repeated it since the day that I was born

I would move a mountain just for you to see me
I would crater this world as I start shrieking
How much I love the energy you bring
Every word I hear
Is like music to my ears

And as the ground crumbles below you
I would rip my own heart out if it meant that I could show you
That I would do anything to ensure that I could know you

You may never read this and perhaps it is our destiny
But that feeling in my heart, never to subside
I’d tear through fate itself
Just to call you mine

Nice and slow
That's how we loved
A day at a time
Falling deeper and deeper
Forging bonds
Every second together
Exciting and new
A life growing and growing
Until eventually
We reached our tallest peak
How quickly
We crashed and burned
We dropped 
Just like our hearts did
A divebomb 
That broke everything 
The lowest point
Is what we ended up with 
Nice and slow
That's how I recovered
Horribly fast 
Was how you moved on

I've become convinced that love ends in pain.

Maybe not in eternity, but in this life, I believe that's true. Love in this life has an end already written. And it hurts. Giving into love is like locking yourself in a prison, knowing that a lethal injection is the only way out. I used to think that didn't matter to me... "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Well my defense mechanisms are screaming the opposite. They're making the part of love that's supposed to be sweet have a bitter aftertaste. I thought I would choose love, even knowing the end. Now love's been presented to me so nicely, but my guts are in a knot and that lethal injection is haunting me. How do you defy every self-preservation bone in your body for love?

To make it even more difficult, I don't see anyone else struggling with this decision. Other people just embrace the lethal injection without a second thought. They're okay with the trade. They don't even care if a key to the prison exists cause they would never so much as think about taking it. Love is worth it to them...

Why isn't it to me?

What made my defense mechanisms so heightened that I can't deny them for something I want. For something that would be really good... Maybe a key doesn't exist. But my mind found another solution: don't go into the prison. Just avoid the whole thing to begin with. So here I am, stuck in the middle. In what feels like a perpetual struggle between my heart wanting something beautiful and good, but my brain being in fight-or-flight mode trying to protect me. It's exhausting. It's a lot easier just being alone... My life was still so full...
The "happily ever after" side of me wants to believe I'll choose love. But my brain is a realist. And it has a hard time believing I'll choose the prison...

The brokenness of our emotions
Keeps me forever in motion
Caught in the current of affection
Drowned by the spirit of your transgressions
Holding tight to my own distorted truth of you
Whose love was one I thought through
Stabbing in the depths
Tossing me off the cliffs
Strangling my wounded heart
To leave me helpless from this gunshot  
To use my love as the confidence for another
Leaving me to look at your cracked love for this other
Bitterness doesn’t paint a pretty picture
The stench of this anger has created this creature
The beast hides from behind this mask
Never living up to its task
Scaring the scars of others
So it doesn’t have to face it’s true colors
The mind of a man had dissipated
Into something the author couldn’t even have anticipated
Waking up
Tears drifted into perspective
As the soul became protective
Hoping this love became lost within the past
Hoping the years have created the illusion at last
Of wondering, did I make you up?

Tell me that you hate me
Say that you find me upsetting
Get angry, get spiteful about it
Block me from all of your socials
Erase the photos and my number
Tell me that you'll never come back
Throw it all back to my face
Please tell me that you hate me
Otherwise
I would still have hope

i cannot tell where you stand
or what you think of me
do you tread on dry land,
or do you go through the sea?

your signs are unreadable, your lips are
divine, perhaps a sign that
you are like a traffic light going back
to green, or to red, to tell me to slow my car

but i can’t stop, it’s on a hill
and the brake-line is cut  
and as i gaze out of my windowsill
and see a tree sprouting chestnuts

your eyes inject me like fentanyl
making me addicted
making me dependent on every glance to live
i’m addicted to your smile, your charm
and all that’s you

he speaks to me about the xylem
and the phloem, meaningless to me when
the only thing i want to do is listen
to him yap, and to gaze at his eyes
like it’s the sun, and i’m a plant