How damning is love with no wonder?
I don’t need you to know my atoms,
or the thoughts I hold to myself
in my little iceberg.
I just want you to look at me.
When you touch the inside of my gums
with your tongue,
my blood boils to 385 fahrenheit,
and the fright in my nerves
reach my temples,
mirroring the rise and fall of my heart.
Look at me.
Just look at the way I subconsciously
ivy around you, my pride.
What is love with no wonder?
What is the magic worth?
When we formed out of craters-
of elated phone conversations
over nocturnal hours,
we didn’t realise the binding ingredient
to all of this was sustainability.
Now stay with me,
because I know you like an elaborate analogy,
and remember the way we formed
this catastrophic crater.
As we patched each fallen gravel
with plasters of i-love-yous,
I yearned to be in the arms of the woman
who promised me sunshine.
We were cracking beneath the
whimsical demands of this concrete jungle,
and a voice asked to see that smile again.
That time in Nandos
when you couldn’t comprehend
the sheer beauty of never spending
another birthday apart again.
When you didn’t,
Loneliness woke,
crying funeral tears,
and yelled-
“I’m not mourning us yet.”
Which brings us to Monday morning,
when I read over the words you once
inspired in me.
Love, Awe, Glory,
like celestial beings,
beamed over the bubbles of dismay
you caught like an explorative toddler.
The child in me gave way, and
I surrendered the keys.
I’m not surprised you were dizzy and nauseous
at what you found.
I weaved cobwebs around most of my demons,
only some of which escaped this Narnia.
So I’m scared.
Scared that the me,
the cluttered me,
the inner me,
may never know a companion,
if you lock the doors now.
There isn’t a universe in which
the explorer in me ever showed anyone
the basement
until you arrived.
And even now,
you just wish your days were not
eclipsed by its massive structure.
Please,
spare me.
Let me go if all you ever bargained for
were the parts of me that are alive.