phantom love

haunted by you

The fatigue I endure makes me sick, a dreamy guilty pleasure of my craving for disease, like the sickness I feel for you and how you string me along and I grasp that thread and wish it would snap and I could tumble through the emotions that would rid me of the churning in my gut. But I stay attached, dragged in the wake of radiant somaesthesia, and you look back and wink and smile and giggle at how hopeless I am, and I return it all with gratitude that I can be so lucky to become bruised in broken holding to the idea of you.

And the way the notifications remind, the banner of another lover, the location of where all I want goes, where what I die for hides in someone different. The reminders that I am just another fleeting thrill to a life that will never be mine to live.

I’ve sent all the hints, but I cannot be so obvious to say the words, for then you would have the proof that you should stay away. And I wouldn't blame you, and I don't, for the separation you keep. I fear that could be the cut to sever what ties me, chokes me, makes me feel alive. So I keep them as merely hints, hints you don’t need because you feel it too, and we are both too scared to say it, as if silence makes it true.

We keep these things as an undercurrent pact, a tide twisting us together, and hide from ourselves in each response, wish the stars would prophesize of something a tiny slice different, that we could be each other's pain for an evening, or a summer, but not forever. That we are captives of a waning crescent moon, and the ebb will be upon us soon. Because we know that this kind of love is the destroyer of worlds and each other’s vision of a future that isn’t filled with so much uncertain bloodshed.

The vines of your heart crawl up my wall, thorns ripping me open to you. As those lacerations embed, become my flesh, I crave even more the hot clawing mutilation of my soul. I boil, comfortably, hoping to soften for your nibble. All knowing you are soon to leave, and all that ignites me will fade, frostbitten.

I make plans to ignore, to be the cold shoulder you embody with ease, and forget that we are what we are. I make a deal with myself that this is it, I am finally free. I make that false agreement knowing I am one glance, one word, one shrug or stretch, from falling for you all over again. And you prove it. For who. Others talk because it is too obvious. You prove that I am a hapless chump and your goofy smile saves me. A smile you aren’t so proud, but one I can’t resist. And even when I try, I watch myself, I feel my lips, they can’t frown when my eyes are drawn to see. The first memory will always be there, me watching, a smile growing tight to pain, watching myself fall in love with you.

The rest of them might fade, but days I fell, felt effortless, the ones that stay I can’t erase. You always need to leave, and we never spend a moment showing, nobody will ever know, so forget me when I go.

I toss, a wrinkled sheet, wishing to wear holes for see through fantasy. Empty in imaginary inamorata. Day breaks, you are still there, walking with me, invisible drifting dreams. I know I need to eat, but I’m sick with this, my stomach rejects anything but you. The world is sour and revolting when my mind is free from obsessions of us. I spit the disgust, hoping it will be refilled with liquid love.

You said I am too sweet. I am possessed, a fiend for the taste of you, feverish between daydreams. A venomous saccharine concoction, lethal trust in needing more: hot flashes, lust, irresistible thoughts, intrusive, picturesque. Us—breathless—licking each other to the core.

You speak, curious of my fits, as if I have control. Instead I am a sleepless delirium, one you will never see, because I am too full of life when I feel you nearby, and it pulses and expands beyond me, something floating to find you. But you are not nearby, the feeling of you is a ghost in daylight, reminding me I will be awake tonight.

The idea of you dies more every day, I smash things so as not to scream. The screams don't leave, I strangle them knowing saying anything would have no meaning. I dig graves with shadow reason, digging for the callous of rip-raw hands. I shape that casket hollow in your image, scraping fingertip to bone, burying our future alive.

I lay awake with the thought of you, laying next to me. But even if you were on top of me, no fabric in between, even if we shared a skin, it would not be close enough for me to show how close I feel to you. And no matter how much distance you put between us, it will always keep me wondering...

Are you the one that I would never tire for?

while chasing phantom love

👻💕