stifle.

Every time I see you
my heart clenches up like a fist,
sealing up its many cracks.

Because I know if it didn't,
this feeling would ooze from me
like a thick and sticky oil.
Because I know if I let go
the feeling would overwhelm me.

I stifle the trembling ache in my chest,
since to let you see it is unthinkable,
and to let myself feel it
would be suicide.

But when I leave you,
unclenching these tired muscles,
hopelessly attempting to wipe the smudge of you off of my heart,
only then will it all seep out,
covering me in a murky sludge,

drowning me in the viscid mire that is
love.

At first, I didn't like you.
I didn't know what to make of you.
You were too strange, too quiet, too different.
But now, peeling back these coarse, unremarkable petals,
I have discovered the soft, silent bud that sleeps within.
Can I rouse you, as you have awakened me from my complacency,
ripping me open, tearing through the hardened flesh,
surging through me like an oblivious beast?
Or will you have to discover your own strength,
the force
to will your flower to unfold?

immortality.

I barely knew you.
And yet, you changed me so profoundly.

Because I wanted to be remembered
the way you were remembered.

darling.

You're hot.
But you're not that hot.

Nobody is that hot.