prayingmantis

an ode to the love letters that died in my throat

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

PS: I still dream about you

--a prose poem, post script note, crumpled letter ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

There’s something eerie about someone alive haunting you. 

In my dreams, we're a few years back. Your eyes are on my own, and mine can’t find anything worthy to focus on but yours. And something leaves my lips that makes the corner of yours curl up and your teeth show. You laugh that stupid sound, and my heart beats faster and my lips mirror yours.

I know it’s not now. And I know it’s not real. 

We lost the ability to exist together a long time ago.

And I know when I wake up and I see you again, we’ll avoid eye contact, talk badly about each other, and exclusively speak through birthday greetings. 

So now, in this fuzzy dream, I’ll look at your dimples a little longer, study the way your sound feels in my ears, and will myself wake up faster. 

I’ll want to stay longer, sure, but I’ve been here before, and staying too long makes the pit in my stomach ache deeper when I wake up.

It’s all for the same reason I avoid you, too. If I start to see you more, I know we’ll make each other laugh like we used to, and just imagine how easy it’ll make it for me to forget why we stopped being in the first place. 

God knows I used to want to stay asleep forever. Just to feel you again. 

But your caricature never captures how real we felt. 

So, I’ll stay awake a little longer. Set alarms a little earlier. Stop talking to our mutual friends, take alternative routes.

Just to slim my chances of seeing–feeling--you again. 

I know it’s what you would want from me.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

A love letter on New Year’s Eve

--a lyric poem, love poem, new year’s kiss ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

You, my love, are:

Embroidered clothes

Leftover glitter from makeup that wont come off

Mug rims stained onto mahogany

Contrasting patterns on fabric

Sticker residue

Eye contact when someone cracks a joke

Blue eyeliner

Awful karaoke

Tarnished metals

Plastic sticky tabs peeking out of books

Postage stamps

Wonky cursive

Mismatched socks

Glow in the dark stars on the ceiling

Pop-up birthday cards

and

truly cosmic

And this, my love, makes you impossibly perfect.

I want infinite years with you. We are dust in the universe and I want you to be all I see for the rest of our miniscule lives.

To my starry-eyed lover, happy new year.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ written work on inward cruelty --a lyric essay, diary entry, fuzzy thought⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

I am a writer.

I called myself that, because all you need to be a writer is to grab your words and hand and exert them into the universe.

I write poorly, and slowly, and passionately, and swiftly, and precisely—all in an indistinguishable blur.

I write about sadness: I write only when those cold summer nights come, when I am lonely, and my ceiling plays a projection of memories of my father and mother, and the girls by my side that change age by age, and a boy whose face I find hard to forget and whose soul I find hard to distinguish.

My head is filled with words only when there is nothing left to fill it with—when everything else feels so empty I feel the need to clutter it.

Writing is something I’m passionate about. It’s something that wakes me up from a particular stillness and numbness, something that gives me purpose and I feel proud reading.

The object of my words–my passion–is my utter despair. The bluest, coldest nights and thoughts are the ones I feel the need to document in such words that give solely, only, me the most vivid understanding and memories of them. I feel the need to turn my misery into poetry, to romanticize even these parts of me. 

I want to understand them. I want to run them over and over again in some sick, nostalgic play to find some way to make it all make sense and some way to smooth the scars over and wash them away. 

I want to write. I want to find words in moments and expressions and movements, I want everything to make sense to me, to find the exact stanzas that will color everything in.

 I want to find words in nothings.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

Dear December,

You can imagine writing this letter is exceptionally hard. I imagine reading it must feel silly—for the time you will waste reading these words from my heart, I apologize.

I believe you are happy. I always have. I did not think my presence or lack of it affected you in any negative or positive way, and I continue not to in fear of being vain.

I wanted to assume—wanted to will into existence that you still thought of me. That our brief string of conversations held relevance in your memory, that it held a space in your life—but it’s as if my brain was programmed to shut that down. So, it’s almost unbelievable to me when I hear that you do remember it. I couldn’t fathom it. That it was real—that it wasn’t something I had made up.

I do not assume that you think of me as deeply as I do of you, but simply the fact that my name still leaves your mouth is an open door for my brain to branch possibilities into.

My first instinct is to ask exactly what you said, to ask “What?,” exactly what. No one seems to want to give me that answer, and the ones that do cannot recall as vividly as I want them to.

I want to ask you, why? Is it just a simple absentminded thought that left your lips in a breath you didn’t mean to let out? That’s what I assume. That’s what I make myself assume—what I’ve made myself assume for so long that it’s what I automatically reason it to be.

Then, it is erased from my train of thought. Intentionally. It is a topic I cannot dwell on. You are a topic I cannot dwell on. If—when—I think about you for more than a second, I let myself analyze. Analysis or delusion, I’m not quite sure. It turns into this. A jumble of words that my brain spills out like vomit.

Because, really, why am I still in any part of your life, no matter how little? I need you to erase me completely, because I already believe that you have. It is the theory where I base my growth on. The reason I put effort into trying to forget you is because I believed you have forgotten me.

I think stupid things. That you bring me up because maybe you, too, are staring at your ceiling at four in the morning thinking about December.

And that is a bitter thought. A thought with a horrible stench I cannot rid without your help.

So, please, if my name ever slips out of your lips again, let the reason be speaking ill of me. Throw everything I have given you away. Block me, delete our conversations. Deny what we were until it no longer exists.

It will be easier for me to let go of you if you lose every part of yourself that made me think you were ever mine.

Now, please let it stick. Do not lose the cruelty you keep on growing to push me away. Do not let me see the sweetness you harbor ever again.

Do not wish me a happy birthday. Don’t ask about my family, don’t greet me at holidays, don’t cheer me on.

I pray for you to never knock on my door again, because it is never locked, and I fear it never will be.

I really do just miss you. So please, don’t write back.

[prayingmantiiis]

--a lyrical flash prose, drafted letter, silent prayer ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖ ⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

heresy & blasphemy

--a confessional lyric poem, my few last words ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

i wonder if we were ever true,

 

or if i have sought for you so deeply

and so deludedly

that my longing has rewritten our moments

 

while reality whispers

that no amount of words

from my deceitful perspective

can will us into a different end

 

i may wrack my brain endlessly,

bruise my knees for a sign,

 

as our corpse stays rotting,

not ours, but mine

 

for you will have hanged me

on the forgery of your touch

 

and God will condemn my eyes

for the worship of my own myth

i built of us

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

fingerprints of my first love

--a lyric essay, prose poem, late night crash-out ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

I wasn’t his first love. No, not even close. If I let my mind wander far enough it’ll travel to a world where I am, but that never ends well for me when I snap out of it.

I wasn’t the girl that left a mark on him when she left either. Quite the opposite, actually. Plus, whatever we had wasn’t that real.

I’m also not the girl that gets to have him now, bless her soul.

I thought maybe we’d have something that stood out to him. God, I mean, I’d loved him so much longer than they all had combined, I thought—I prayed—that in some way, that would mean something to him. That it’d hold even just a fraction of his heart for more than a second.

But somehow, even then, I knew it wouldn’t end well for me. It never does.

I put myself in this situation over and over and over again. Just waiting and waiting as he let himself fall for another girl time and time again.

Even as they inevitably end, it amazes and horrifies me how he can just give himself to another so easily.

This time, I thought it’d be different. This time it felt different.

Because I could swear he had never looked at me like that before.

The banter and debates and all the yelling we exchanged was now replaced with him passing me compliments.

Compliments I tried my hardest to dodge and decipher. I didn’t want to let myself think that what I had been yearning for all these years had come. I didn’t want to be let down, not again.

I didn’t want them to stop either.

I didn’t want any of it to stop. The way he ghosted his fingers against mine, the way he touched my hair, the constant pressure of his hand on my back, his shoulder against mine, our conversations that just seemed to get longer and dig deeper every time we opened our mouths, the care in his eyes mixed with the voice dripping in concern when he checked on me—I needed it to stay. I needed him to stay.

I needed to understand it. Why now? I had been by his side as we changed alongside the seasons, but why now? Is it the way I’d been doing my hair—my makeup? Is it the way I dressed now?

That was a neat way to drive myself crazy.

Because of course he wouldn’t stay, he never had. Not by me, anyway.

To him, I was a constant that was always changing. I was close enough to dig his nails into when he needed something to keep him company, fluid enough to pique his interest, but just not enough for him to stay.

And I knew it from the start, God, I knew it.

I don’t know how I let myself think otherwise.

All I wanted was for him to stay, and the desperation forming in my eyes clouded my brain. I just wanted him to stay this time.

And now I have to force myself to unlearn how it all felt—rid myself of the fingerprints he burnt into me.

He was my first love, and I was his next best thing.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

--a confessional lyric poem, nod of understanding ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

the softness after the storm

--a lyric essay, prose poem, journal entry⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

Three years. It doesn’t look like a lot. I mean, reading it, seeing it as three sets of 12 condensed months on your calendar—it’s only 36 months. I used to think it didn’t do the time justice.

Compared to how much I’ve lived—how much we’ve lived, three years is a big fraction of our lives. Time is time. Any minute you live is a minute spent deciding what to do with it. And we only have so many. It bugged me—kept me up at night—just thinking about how much of that time I spent hurting because of you. And the time I actually spent doing exactly that—hurting because of you. That was excruciating. Degrading.

Sometimes it was quiet. I didn’t have time to think about you if I kept myself busy—if other people kept me busy. If I just threw myself into socializing or studying or art so I wouldn’t have to waste any more of the little life I have left on you—for you. I couldn’t feel your absence when everything else was loud enough to fill the hole.

And, I mean, it was good. It’s a good thing to keep yourself busy, to “maximize your productivity” or “make the most out of the people around you.” Plus, it feels good to simply be instead of being stuck in my head with the nostalgia of you.

But it’s tiring. When you stayed you gave me a reason to be, and now that you’re gone I try to just be and do everything I can so I don’t have to acknowledge the ache you left. It’s no secret I’m avoiding it.

Then, it hits. In the pauses between conversations, when I excuse myself at a party, when I put the pen down, it’s still you.

When there is nothing left to focus on, when my hands aren’t kept busy—when my mind isn’t—it’s all you. All I feel is the mold of you, imprinted into every inch of my skin.

Those days were hard. Long. I was so angry that I let you take so much of me—so much of my soul with you when you left.

Three years. I wanted to rid myself of you. I prayed and hoped and wished to all kinds of gods and saints for the mercy of forgetting. I was drowning in every part of yourself you left and every fucked up part of me you ruined.

Then, I stepped back and saw all you had left me with. I also saw myself.

It had been a long time since you took off. The wreckage we were was old—untouched. Static. I wasn’t drowning or being pulled in—not anymore. I had succumbed to it. I went limp—let my body sink until I was blue. And just seeing that—seeing me like that helped me breathe again.

Three years. It’s really not much time. And if you asked me to do it all again I would. In a heartbeat. Thirty-six months doesn’t feel close to enough time to be able to love anyone.

With every day that passes, you slip further and further into a part of my history I won’t remember the details of. And just for now, I’ll use the love I still have for you to write about what it once was. Before it shrinks into something I’ll have to dig deep for, something I’ll barely remember.

I don’t feel worthy of forgetting about it yet, or admitting that one day I will forget about it—us. For three years I held onto you. When I started to let go it was sudden and scary, but so long overdue and needed. It doesn’t feel real to not have you looming over my happiness anymore. It doesn’t feel right yet.

But I’m happy now. I make art, I laugh, I cry, I sing, and it’s for me. I think the subconscious need to ensure that the things I make will please you on the off chance you see it is gone. I’m made of happiness I provide myself with.

None of me is perfect yet, but I now grow full of a sweetness that’s only meant for me.

It didn’t grow in spite of you or in pity of my own lifeless eyes, but from my passion for all the things that I grew to love and grew to love me in my pursuit of happiness.

You have parts of my soul in your past, but I have grown fondness and a sense of softness you’ll never meet.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

The Illusion of Intimacy & Warmth

--a lyric essay, prose poem, eulogy ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

It’s hard to describe something that traveled through feelings. Something unspoken, undetermined.

Intimacy—an abstract word.

The word that floats around in my mind when I think of ways to describe what happened between us, but a word I never use; I don’t think you’d say it was intimate.

It wasn’t the intimacy used to describe tangled mouths or intertwined hands, not bodies merging. It wasn’t lewd. I thought that’s what intimacy had to be,

but maybe intimacy was when our arms brushed against each other and I saw you wear something that was mine—when you let other people see you wearing something that was mine.

Maybe it was when you brushed your fingers through my hair and rubbed my scalp,

when you remembered things I told you two years ago—when I remembered things you told me three years ago,

maybe it’s what I felt when you rubbed your thumbs against my fingertips,

maybe it’s what you meant when you said your mom liked me,

maybe it was when I painted you.

You wouldn’t call it intimacy. I was only someone you were around because I radiated warmth you needed.

I’d call it intimacy because I knew and still stayed.

I’d call it intimacy because while it wasn’t real—wasn’t spoken, it was still felt.

I don’t know what you’d call it.

I don’t think you’d call it anything. Because you’re right, it wasn’t. It was too brief—too vague to be anything to someone like you.

We weren’t anything. I could’ve told you from the beginning that we would never be.

You wanted something real—I did too. I just wasn’t anything real to you.

I only showed up in your life in the form of knowing eye contact, knees brushing, calls that took place when the moon went up. Understanding too painstakingly real it kept you up at night.

I showed up in intimacy you found too obscure—intimacy that was too hard to swallow to feel like the real thing, but just close enough to keep around before it arrived.

I hope you feel the true teenage intimacy you seek so thoroughly for, and I hope it’s nothing like the intimacy I felt we had.

I hope whatever we were in those barely there words and touches stays mine. And I hope it haunts you.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

--a quote, prose poem, whispered argument ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

remembering a ghost who wants to be forgotten

--a lyric essay, prose poem, angry confession ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

I don’t know how to forget you, but I’m starting to.

There’s a lot I don’t remember about you. I don’t remember how your touch feels, how big or small your palm felt against mine, how warm it felt when your fingertips skimmed against my skin.

I don’t remember if the shoulders I once leaned on were broad or narrow, nor the pattern of your laughter—though my eyes still try to find the ghost of you when think I hear it.

It’s not that I can’t remember it. If I shut my eyes and willed hard enough to remember all the details—every twitch of your fingers—I bet I could. Not because I made it a point to memorize everything about you, but because my subconscious felt it too. It felt how my heart got warm and how my lips curled upwards ever so softly every time I saw you.

I didn’t intend to know you this well—to notice how your lips slightly parted when you were thinking and how your eyes got big when you were really listening. I wished against it.

But my subconscious prevailed. It thought you were important enough to learn by heart.

I don’t know if any of this is a curse or a blessing.

It's not like I mean to, but I take comfort in knowing you. It’d be easier if I didn’t, but I do.

I want to reach out and hold you, and touch you, and trace every line of your face until it’s etched into the ridges of my brain, but all I can have is knowing you. Honestly, what’s more intimate than that?

I dream of you too. I don’t remember how they go, but I know I dream of you. I can tell by the pit in my stomach you always leave.

It’s not a scary haunting. It’s a familiar one. We’ve been here before—I’ve been here before. I’m stuck constantly just remembering you.

For months, turned years.

Not a lot, when you put it like that. Feels like more. It’s something you can only understand once you’ve been there.

There, in cold summer nights when your usual chaos of thoughts are quiet and your mind is clear enough to remember it all. There, in the warm mornings of June when you’re laughing and it hits you allllll again like a freight train. In every comfortable silence since then, when your brain wanders far enough, wondering, how is it that I find comfort in you?

It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t feel fair.

It doesn’t seem real either.

You always only barely brushed your hand against mine. Not in a way anyone could tell—just your skin grazing my own. Our fingers intertwining for a blink and you pulling away before your friends noticed. Just enough to feel real.

It’s all absurd, really. Stupid of me to begin to think anything.

I know I don’t get to have you. But in between the girls that do, it almost feels like you’re mine. Not enough to be real,

just enough to feel real to me.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

--a quote, prose poem, unspoken understanding ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

Am I defined as the girl I am on my warmest mornings or coldest nights? --a lyric essay, prose poem, unfinished thought, question to God % the universe ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

On my warmest mornings, I wake up without a fight.

I don’t care to remember what my dream was about, and the warmth of the sun peeks through my curtains and engulfs my sheets, hugging me in a comfortable blanket of heat. My sheets smell newly washed. Not with the cheap detergent that makes them smell too strongly like the perfume of the old lady selling fruits downstairs. (No offense—Dolores is actually very kind, she just either has the strongest perfume known to mankind or doesn’t know when to stop putting fragrance on. Bless her soul.) My bed smells like flowers, like it’s been dried in the sun for me to bury my face in.

My brain is fuzzy with sleep, and there isn’t one specific thing in my mind. The thoughts come and go. All good things, though.

I think about the smell coming from behind my cracked door. It’s faint. Pancakes, maybe? It smells like raw batter and melted butter. My mom must be in a good mood.

I remember how me and my friends had waffles for breakfast on a windy morning last June. We sat at a small cafe that had Funko Pops as decor. I got excited when they had Marvel ones. We were tousled from sleep after half-watching a movie the previous night, squishing ourselves from shoulder to shoulder to fit on the twin-sized bed before ditching that for ice cream and hushed jokes and out-of-breath laughter in the kitchen.

I think about how those girls are the personification of my love. How they’ve changed me in ways I can’t fathom, how we’ve been hunched over from laughing, holding our stomachs in pain that somehow felt good, and how they’ve softened me into something moldable enough to know how to accept and give affection.

I imagine them getting married, wondering what type of dresses they would pick out, what type I would want someday too. I imagined them as my bridesmaids in a wedding that feels like it’s impossibly far away.

I let myself daydream about what my future husband would be like. How I’d find someone to love all of me, and someone I love all of. Who touches me with nothing but heart-aching sweetness and fondness to the point it makes me roll my eyes.

On my coldest nights, I stare at my ceiling just thinking. I’ve tried falling asleep, but I ended up getting stuck in my own body with something dark watching me.

My body aches with how cold it is. My bones feel brittle, and every inch of my skin feels purple with bruises. I don’t feel like moving anyway.

The house is quiet. Peace seems only to come these days when no one else is awake. Short-lived peace, though. My brain kills it at the first sight. It runs through everything wrong I’ve done, overanalyzes every twitch of a finger or furrow of an eyebrow of everyone who has been in my presence, and convinces me it’s a sign they can’t stand me. Makes me think I’m so smart for figuring it out.

My under-eyes feel sunken.

I am reminded of my consciousness right now. What have I become—made of myself?

I feel alone. My friends are ignoring me for their current boys-of-the-week. That jab might just be the bitterness talking.

Oh, the bitterness. It consumes me. The self-deprecation reaches an all-time high. Every blue memory rings in my ear, convinces me it’s a valid excuse to leave everything. I’m alone not because of people leaving on their asshole-ery—I’m alone because I push people away. Whether it’s my actions or words, it’s weird. Off-putting. Rude.

I think about how scared I am. Not of the void that watches me through sleep paralysis, but of people’s perceptions of me. It makes me too cowardly for my own good. It was fun to ignore up until now. Now, my self-awareness is clawing at me to remember, remember, remember.

How maybe if I wasn’t too scared to speak it, I could’ve had a chance at love too.

Maybe if I grew up with some inkling on what love truly was, I wouldn’t run at the first sight of it. Maybe I wouldn’t be so angry with it. Maybe if I didn’t grow up on a house on fire I'd be different. Softer.

Maybe I'm making excuses for my own asshol-ery.

I pray that this moment doesn’t define me, but who am I to pick and choose which ones do?

Which ones do?

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

₊˚‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹ writer's note : if youre reading this, thank you for making it this far!!! i wanna say thank you to anyone who read my last posts or is reading ths one!!!!! it warms my heart like freaking crazy when there is proof of even ONNEE soul reading anything i write. i'm not sure if this one is any good, it's just a late night blurb that i might delete. brain barf!!! ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ ₊˚⊹ ୭࿔*:･

[prayingmantiiis]

--a quote, prose poem, unsent message ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖ ⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺

[prayingmantiiis]

---𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚⋆.࿔*୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

how a girl in flames tries to love --a lyric essay, prose poem, love letter ⋆˚࿔.☘︎ ݁˖

I do not know how to love well.

I would be a bad lover. I am a bad lover, as far as the type of love I’ve experienced goes. I come from a house on fire where words were spat with a sharp edge and anger was synonymous with a sort of violence. And as they say, when you grow up in a house on fire, you think the whole world is burning.

It sounds worse than it is. The cycle repeats, and as it does, you grow desensitized to the constant upset that is your life. As sad as that might sound, that is simply how people grow. For example, if your parents are constantly late to things throughout your life, you’re not surprised when they miss a few hours of a recital. You’d probably grow up to have the habit too. Same applies for the house on fire. The heat doesn’t get better, you just get used to the flames that never seem to go out. And the trail will somehow follow you too.

You’ll go into the world, and everything you touch will burst into flames. I get that now.

I’m not strong enough to break the cycle—to shrug off whatever sickness they planted in me. The smoke bellows out and everything good I have is turned to ashes. It’s the tough part of being my parent’s offspring. The face of two people was a nice thing to inherit, but the anger that shows whenever I furrow my eyebrows—that damn fire—makes it painful to look at my reflection. It ruins me.

Disorganized attachment, self-sabotage, whatever they call it—I don’t know what it is, but it’s what I think is wrong with me. It’s one of the things the fire is. It’s what fuels me to seek emotional intimacy, the thing that makes my claws dig into someone to be dependent on then suddenly push away, that feeling that gives me the urge to never leave and run away at the same time. It’s what makes me a bad lover.

I love a lot. Unconditionally. Truly. With every fibre of my shitty existence, I love. It’s laced in the ink I write my countless words, essays, letters, poems with. It’s the pigment that I use to draw and paint. It’s in the vibrations of my throat as I speak and sing and cry. It’s the magic my dreams are made of and the pattern my heart beats.

Tragically, the fire burns it all to nothing. The writing is turned to dust. The art too. The words get stuck in my throat and it paralyzes me in my sleep. It makes my heart ache. It makes me a bad lover. The temper, the frustration, the way my words twist into things I don’t mean and spill out when I can’t find the right ones. It makes me a bad person. It turns the reflection in my eyes into the light of an angry flame before killing it.

What can I do? It’s in my blood. It runs through my veins and through my hair and lungs, it’s embedded into my fingerprints. I can’t put it out.

I just can’t love right.

I can’t love you any better than she can, than any one of them can. But, God, can I love you more.

The love you have with them will be true, the kind you can feel. And you deserve that kind of love. But once the time comes, and you have proved that it will, you’ll grow, and change, and get over each one. It’s not a bad thing, but it is inevitable. You’ll be lucky to feel that much love in one lifetime.

As you outgrow them, and they outgrow you, your heart will change in pace to match whichever one it yearns for. That is how I will love you more. The love I have is stubborn. It too, is in my blood. It manifests itself in my veins, through my hair, in my lungs, my fingerprints, the layers of my skin, every particle, every atom, of my being will burn for you. It’s not something I can put out. The beating of my heart may falter, change in pace, get quieter, but it will always beat your name, try to mimic the sound of your voice as I remember it and as I start to forget it. It’s not something I can change. My heart will always beat just for you. It will call out for you when nights get cold and my dreams try to replicate what it felt like to feel your warmth, even as your heart is linked to someone else. This is how I love you impossibly more.

To put it simply, I can’t get over you. Even when our memories start to feel like imagination. Though the line between "can’t" and "won’t let myself" gets blurry, I don't think I ever will be.

I’ll always scorch you whenever our paths touch, and I’ll always be sorry, but I’ll always love you more than anything I’ve loved and anyone who will ever love you.

⊹˚.ೃ࿔ by prayingmantiiis ⋆.࿔*⁺