i.
there is no need in this, only want.



ii.
i fear for my safety, and you know this.

i don’t know if i should be disturbed by your telling me that you would kill them if they ever hurt me, and yet you are nearly a man too.  i am disturbed by how far i let you in and i am glad you can’t see how you are the one who could hurt me most of all, and

only the trust i have in you will prevent that eventuality.



iii.
i have always been an obstinate creature.  my mother spent years telling everyone who asked how i spent days clinging to the inside of her womb, unwilling to come out with the rose-tinted, nostalgic wisdom of infants.  maybe it was obduracy.  maybe it was fear.

you are the only one who could undecide me, and you have.  and i am.



iv.
you watch me open the door to you in my dressing gown, warm from the water of recent showers.  are you sick? you ask, taking me in as i let you in, because you know i only ever let myself be nearly-naked when i am too unwell to be bothered with clothes and words, and you do not know that i never let anybody else see me this way.  

i am.  i am sick with love.



v.
i am curled up on my left and my heart is thumping against my ribs, but there is no door to my flesh except when you look at me and everything comes tumbling out.  i tell you about the perfection of a double pump and you fill in the gaps i left so i could hear your voice.  but it is when you lift the corners of your eyes that all my chambers are suddenly empty and the world is perfectly arrhythmic.

it is wonderful.



vi.
there is so much of me that is yours only, and i wish i had the courage to tell you.  




vii.
i asked you how you love and you didn’t know, so you asked me how i love but the only thing i know about that is how to do it with all my heart.

you asked me to tell you how to love, once, and i couldn’t think of anything to say except to submit a request to your heart for a failure of gravity so you would be unafraid of falling.

i am writing this for you because you wanted to know how.  this, beloved, this is how you fall.