bittersweet

i.

Love first found me as a whisper, grew around me like a Glycine vine, swallowed me like a grave.

My lips were sewn shut, shadow cast around me as a straitjacket, insecurity noosed around my neck. Words were decaying in my throat, seeping a stench only I could smell.

But he was born of spotlights, shaped like confidence, coaxing my voice from me: a magician drawing light from a blackout curtain.

The Grand Canyon fall was not intentional.

I shattered all the same. A mistake made by insecurities intertwined with naivety: thinking being loved meant being worth something and being overlooked equalled worthlessness.

I was a puppet, my feelings for him the strings, dancing and drooping and dying whenever he gave me his gaze or buried it.

My world revolved around him – a body relying on its heartbeat. My world fell apart without him – a planet lacking gravity. An inevitable apocalypse, created by me, blamed on him.

ii.

The next time romance stumbled upon me, I was dusting off ash, spitting out dirt, gasping for air. This time, it was a silhouette in the shape of hope. One that looked enough like my first love to smile at, but different enough not to run from.

Comparisons clung to me, even as I tried to forget about the spotlights and the vines and my cataclysmic end.

His smile was a fire and now I am finding comfort in a match.

His laugh was an orchestra, but I am finding contentment in a quiet hum.

His eyes were a cyclone. I am learning to adore a soft sprinkling rain.

All to convince myself that I loved this poorly disguised replacement just as much.

iii.

If opposites are a curse, then I was pulling out my book of spells.

The third time I got lost in someone’s eyes, I knew the risks and drowned in them anyway.

He was the careless to my careful, the nonchalance to my overthinking, and of course, the running to my staying.

The jump was deliberate.

I watched as the concrete kissed my face, shattered my teeth. I tasted the blood and called it recovery.

There is a beauty in diving without knowing the water’s depth. A tragic allure in hoping for endlessness, despite seeing the ground just below the surface.

I welcomed the shifting of the tectonic plates like a masochistic kind of kamikaze.

I traced his flaws, bending them and twisting them into poetry. I noted his packed suitcases but found his disappearing act could not dry out an already barren wasteland.

There is a numbness, in saying too many goodbyes, in having your pessimistic predictions proven right; in wearily pressing the pen to paper again.

iv.

When I next found someone to yearn for, I wrapped my heartstrings around him because I thought he would stay. They sung like a broken harp when he cut them.

I was a glass house. Him, the stone. I collapsed (again) at the mere impact of collision.

I labelled it love, only to later learn it had been empathy, found the realisation that his apathy did not mean I was unlovable, just deserving of something better.

v.

Then, there was you.

Another book of curses and involuntary falls that I knew better than to resist.

You - familiarly enchanting but strangely soft and incomprehensibly elusive.

Because I knew you were worlds away. Knew there would always be space and stars between us. Knew I could not blame you for the merciless distance destined to keep us apart.

But your presence was necromancy, bringing me back from the dead. Your smile was sunlight entering my coffin.

I craved your love like I long for rain but dared not wish for it. I tucked my daydreams into my jacket pocket, placed a smile of realism on my face, and held a bittersweet epiphany in my hands.

vi.

Because finally, after flying and falling and breaking, I know.

The beauty of life is not about receiving love. It is about giving it.