If It Isn’t Love..

they say
love doesn’t beg
doesn’t split itself in half
and call it enough

doesn’t bleed quietly
while someone else
wipes their hands clean

love doesn’t sound like
I love you
followed too quickly by
I’m sorry

like the truth slipped out
and needed to be taken back

I know this

I know all the rules now
I could recite them
like scripture
like survival

and still—

I built a home out of you anyway

three days ago
you existed in my orbit
three days ago
my name still lived in your mouth

now time is a strange animal
stretching itself thin
refusing to move
and moving too fast

my body is disobedient

it reaches for you
like you’re still there

thumb hovering
over a ghost

I keep almost
almost
almost
calling

because what do I do
with all the unfinished conversations
rotting in my throat

the small things
the meaningless things
the sacred things disguised as ordinary

who do I give them to now

who do I become
without the reflex
of you

you—

you felt like voltage
like standing too close
to something alive and dangerous

I didn’t just feel you
I conducted you

you ran through me
lit up rooms
I didn’t know were dark

and now

everything is dim again
but worse—

because I’ve seen the light

so tell me

what is this

if it isn’t love

because it claws
it howls
it doesn’t sit politely
in the chest

it expands
like it’s trying to break bone

maybe it’s hunger
maybe it’s grief
maybe it’s the body
refusing to forget
what it once recognized
as home

or maybe

maybe it’s something
without a name

something bigger than love
because love—

love sounds soft

and this

this is not soft

this is ache with teeth
this is absence that echoes
this is your name
still existing
in places I can’t reach

and “I miss you”—

God—

“I miss you” is so small

it’s a paper cut
trying to explain
an amputation

because missing you
would mean
there’s still something left
to return to

and there isn’t

there is only

this

this hollow
this noise
this almost
this never again

JMS