A Substack Valentine

A poem

Let us confess something—
We have stood at windows longer than
necessary.
We have reread messages as if the
meaning might blossom differently
under repetition.
We have felt the gut drop like loose
floorboards giving way beneath an utterly
ordinary day.
Reason has already packed its bags.
This is the hidden rope,
the thumping in the ribcage,
the body recalling a warmth
it can’t prove was ever safe.
If you feel the air change and your lungs
tighten, as if bracing for weather,
good.
You’re in the right room.

What new twist of devilry is this?
To complicate that most opaque of
sentiments.
A digital dialogue, a woven opinion on
sunken stomachs and twisted lungs
And dreamy occupations of our eyes
With wistful visions waltzing in time
To forlorn cadences of our past grasps
Spun high in hope
Or sunk low in despair
What lunacy drives humans to climb the sky
To overreach, to pine
To yearn for what cannot be, for the one
who got away, or might yet wait
Whose heart throbs the same pulse as mine?
In wondrous torture, we plunge oft times
A starry-eyed child, bright with aspiration
Knowing the prospect of being dashed to
the jagged seam of reality
And buried in untreated pain and anguish
Still we rise
Some revenant bidden from its crypt by
forces immeasurable
Still ensorceled by an ancient spell
Wafting through antiquity
To plague us today
Curse its draw
Bless its power

Love is not a polite guest.
It boots the sternum door off its hinges and
scrambles the furnishings of your nervous
system.
It raises cramps in your neck.
In the beating pulse behind your ear.
In the small electric buzz beneath your
temples, that can’t be pleaded with.
You call it madness.
You call it a curse.
You call it a spell.
But your body recognizes it.
Something ancient smells the smoke
before you see the fire.
Something older than language leans
ahead and says yes before your mind can
craft a warning.
Love may singe you.
You may bloom-break.
You may sky-reach and ground-crack.
You may press your longing against a
horizon that does not incline back.
Still you rise,
somewhere inside is a revenant heart that
refuses burial.
It knows the jagged stitching of reality,
has memorized the dark,
has died before, and yet…
It keeps opening.
This is the twist.
This is the devilry.
We are not bewitched by love.
We are built for it.
Curse its gravity.
Bless its ruin.
Thank it for the beating that won’t quiet.
And if it shatters you…
let the shards sing.
Let them glitter in your palms like proof
that you’re brave enough to feel.