Once

I think I've been in love once in my life. I've been loved by and felt love for many more than that but there's only been one who's hit me like that. One who the very thought of leaves me wincing and winded, one whose pictures reach out from their confines and into my gut and twist and twist until I just can't take anymore. I've tried to forget, I’ve stopped communicating with myself and turned my back on it all enough times now that I might as well just give it up and abandon the idea of exorcising her altogether. Because if it were up to me, I’d not only unplug her, I'd pack it all in and uproot and flee the city, give up my home and take to the hills. I’d forage for nuts and berries and, come winter, eventually just waste away and it'd be worth it if for one day my mind didn't conjure up her name. Her name. And it's not even that good of a name. Two simple, somewhat ugly syllables on their own that, when applied to her, somehow become beautiful and ring throughout my brain. Her name. Maybe it is a good name, it belongs to her after all. The letters run themselves over and over in my head, cascading down in my thoughts as I stand naked and shivering below in their endless waterfall. She's the water, she's the grass, she's the leaves… and don't even get me started on the trees, each one reminds me of her sturdy limbs, and the twigs are her fingers casting me away and the branches are her arms beckoning me back in.

Her hair is fire, her voice is music and her words are tourniquets and medicine and I am patient and I’m her patient - to my beneficial detriment