just to warn you. it’s super small and pitiful and really looks like it needs to be fed. its mouth is always open wide with this defensive little tongue and you can try feeding it if you want but there’s no guarantee it’ll like the food or say thank you or anything like that. 

Love doesn’t say much of anything. instead it waddles around and just fucking caws at you all the time, like FRAHW FRAWH like that. you know it wants something but you don’t know what because you’ve never had to feed a thing like that. you try spoon-feeding it a single smell of that blue shirt she left on your floor or a text you type out five times then delete and that satiates Love for a while, but soon it’s back whining for more more more more more. 

more what? you don’t know. more action, you guess, but you’ve never really been once for action. at least that’s what she said. 

she said: you just love living in that mind of yours, don’t you and you wanted to tell her yes, that’s where we all live but she had already turned around and put a cucumber slice in her mouth and that was how a lot of your conversations ended anyway: both of you with cold, slippery things still waiting on your tongues and that was all fine. that was all fine until Love came along.

now Love demands action.

Love demands action specifically at 11:33pm on a wednesday night after she’s posted a picture of her mouth in someone else’s hair. Love really does not let you live that one down. all you want to do is retreat back to living in your own stupid little mind but Love negates rumination. rumination is the place Love goes to die, but it never really goes down without a fight.

you didn’t let her go without a fight. 

at least that’s what you tell yourself. you try to tell Love that, too. on those particularly bruising evenings. on the nights when it drills memories into your ears like spiders laying eggs, you shove the letters I -T-R-I-E-D down Love’s gurgling, outstretched throat and it goes down so dry. you hear Love regurgitate the words a few hours later but you just let it go. you just lay there, knowing you’ll have to clean it up tomorrow. it helps, sometimes. just to listen. just to know Love is still there. 

you hadn’t always known Love was there. 

that was back in the summer of searing concrete and sea-dry skin. back when she asked if you wanted the mushy remains of her grape popsicle and you said yes just because you wondered what it was like to be a thing her mouth had been on. you hated grape. you finished the whole thing, purple running down your fingers and your throat, which were both sticky for months afterwards. 

Love was sticky, the first time you held it. 

afternoon, in her bed. afterwards. after she had held your hip in her palm and slipped her finger under the frayed waistband of your underwear, after all the asking, after is this okay, is this okay, after you breathed a yes into her open, waiting mouth. it was after all that. 

afternoon, in her bed. two on a tuesday. you both lay on your sides with your arms making a w between you. there were two of you, then there were three: something tangible flickered in between your fingers. you saw the raw pink of it and were scared by its aliveness. but she gazed down, unconcerned. like she had expected it to be there. 

what the fuck is that, you said. 

i have no idea, she said. she opened her fingers just a bit, like it might jump out. then she smiled. and between the cage of your fingers, Love slept and slept and slept. 

Love stuck around long after she left. 

Love liked her more. you always knew that. but you never knew it like this. 

Love hasn’t slept in months. you try to make Love sleep but it doesn’t want to sleep. you try to feed Love but it doesn’t want to eat. you cup your hands around it and hold it like she did but nothing works. you remember a time when you had a fondness for Love, when it was this sweet and naked and improbable thing, but now when you look down all you see is meat and flesh and teeth and that last day. 

when she put her hair up in a bun with her back to you, said here, hold this, i’ll be right back and the thing was you did hold it. and the thing is you’re still holding it. and you have absolutely no idea where to put it down.