Let me tell you, I thought I knew love before you came around.

I mean, I’ve written a million love poems.

But the subjects, they’re more or less the same, black ink, red ink, graphite.

And the graphite smudges, and so the picture is never perfect.

I try to re-write it all without mistakes, but I don't have an eraser.

Which is to say that I have commitment issues, but no issue committing, I just commit all the time, to everything.

I've canoodled with paper, but there's never enough space on the page for all the love I have.

Sometimes, I’ll meet a crayon that brings some colour to my life, but they’re just too waxy and impressionable. Too immature, too naive.

Naive.

I’ve never actually been in love.

But you, you are so much different and way hotter.

You bring a spark into my life that I’ve never known.

Baby, you set my world on fire.

I tell myself, blue pen, don’t let this go up in smoke.

Let me tell you. I would do anything to know love.

You see, there isn’t much to me, but I’ve got this way with words and I’ll write you into every poem that’s ever birthed hope in the eyes of star-crossed lovers.

I’ll draw you a map of my heart so when you feel lonely after you’ve been put aside and forgotten in the back of a cupboard, I’ll be there.

I want you.

I want the good things and your sweet embrace of smoke smells really good right now.

I want the good things but I’ll take it all. I’ll take the bad things too.

Fill my lungs with your poison, show me what it’s like to love something so much it kills you.

Teach me how to give all of myself to someone just so they are satisfied, even if it leaves me crushed on the cement.

Let me become addicted to you.

My whole life is written in ink and I can’t escape the mistakes I’ve made so if you’ll have me, here I am.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll be right for you, who knows what you write with but I will be here.

Let me tell you, I will still love you after watching you kiss the lips of every person that craves your taste.

I will still love you after you steal the oxygen out of helpless gasps and sunken cheekbones.

I will still love you after your temper sets forests ablaze.

I will still love you when you suffocate me in your fumes, leaving me choking on everything I should have said to you.

I will still love you when you burn out and your ember softens against a pillow of ash, and your smell, your taste, your everything lingers in the air like a nostalgic dream that I never want to wake up from.

Let me tell you, I am forever.

I am infinite and I can create and write anything you want, even if it’s just prose on a piece of paper or a picture of the moon on nights when you’re the only good left in the world.

I can be anything you want, and if that is someone that will love you because they want to, and not because they have to, then I will be that.

I won’t quit you.

I can’t.

Of course
when you've killed all the demons that bedevilled you
what is there left to do but to find more demons.

And this human condition is just one more tradition to keep,
those monsters we make to take the place of the monsters we **** are the same.

We're all connected by indeterminate fears
we fall together in the circles of our tears
and rise to do it again.