Elisabeth Writing

I loved you BUT…

I loved you, like the ocean loves the moon, tides pulling with your command, my body in your sway. My heart mirrored you, an incandescent pearl in the blue deep, as you hung, luminous, in the indigo night. I loved you fiercely, a conquistador planting my feet in the soil of your soul, and claiming it as mine. The only gold I wanted were those amber flecks in your eyes. But I was callow, as green as the first shoots of daffodils through tender grass and soil. The world glittered and sparkled with the gems of spring, and I longed to see it all, to experience every glistening winter-remnant, to uproot myself and see where, exactly, I went. 

I loved you BUT…

I loved you, like those long ago explorers loved to discover new lands, taking off across oceans without knowing whether they’d fall off the edge of the world; setting sail anyway. I used cartography, I used astronomy, to chart the new world I’d found within you. I mapped the slope of your lips, trailed my fingertips through your oceanic irises like I was writing our own  adventures, took off at the slope of your hip bones. I learned about science and ecstasy, youth and chemistry. But, I’d lost myself before you, and I kept losing myself in other ventures, more oceans, more freckle constellations, more blood and feathers and pain. I didn’t remember who I was anymore. I had to leave you, I had to leave this love I’d mapped in ink and tattoos, to discover my own self once more. Even if that meant falling off of the edge of the whole goddamn world. Which… it did. 

I loved you BUT…

I loved you in a way I’ve loved no one else. Obsessive, possessive, unending. We were the fire that raged unchecked, annihilating all in our path, building gardens in the blackened soil. Your dark green eyes lit from within, flames and ash, as they burned away every inch of my skin merely to see my heart. You had it within your callused fingers. You, whom I imagined dancing with beneath the northern lights, gems at our hands and throats. You who I ached for. Yes, we were the wildfire. But – we were also the forests, flaming, screaming as our limbs were scorched, weeping as the torrent of destruction swept us away. We were the dead carcasses of pine needles and a love lost. We were the apocalypse, waltzing over the remnants of cities, swooning over our own graves. 

I loved you BUT…

I loved you like innocence, but innocence never had this heat. I loved you like I was a young girl suckling the honeysuckle blooms from the bottom, to feel that sweetness coat my throat. I loved you like the freedom of climbing jungle gyms in the moonlight, the smell of rubber and coconut sunblock in the smoky evening. I loved you like gloved hands catching mine, twirling in icicle light, knowing you wouldn’t let me fall. I loved you like writing notes in the classroom: “do you like me? Yes / No.” I loved you but sometimes the way you looked at me was like a worshiper kneeling on the pew, gazing up at the icon of his faith with eyes like lavender moons. It made me shiver with longing – and fear. I loved you but your lilac irises saw too much: the goddess and the monster and the scared child. I loved you but sometimes it felt like I was all you wanted, all you had, and it terrified me. I couldn’t be everything; I could only be myself. 

You loved me BUT… 

You loved the way my wings and eyes caught lthe iridescent shimmer of the sun and the sea. You loved the way I swung my legs over dragon scales and took off with you into the azure and tangerine sky. You loved the way my eyes slid to yours, sly and feral, the feline tilt of my mouth. But you didn’t love the way I lived in whiskey and depression. But you didn’t love how, one day, I flew off on my own wings, without you. But you didn’t love the way I ran, panicked, when you got too close. 

I love you but… 

I love you the way I love peace, comfort, warmth. We are a patchwork quilt of the moments and mementoes which made us. It covers us with moons, hot air balloons, doe eyes filled with tears, red lips curled with sensual satisfaction, scraps of poetry, circus tents, fairy lights, the splatter of abstract art, the thread that keeps spinning us together. I love you the way it feels to curl up with you beneath that quilt, gazing up at you with all the love in my eyes, giggling when my hands attack your ribs and you laugh as you bat them away. I love you the way I love a cup of warm caramel tea by the fire, smiling slightly as the snow builds magic palaces outside of our glass windows. I love you but I am so afraid of the way you have the whole of me within your palms. I am a butterfly held within the darkness of your cupped hands, hardly daring to move for the fear of tearing these fragile wings to bits. I trust you with my body and soul, but my heart still beats quickly when you move too quickly, when your face turns to the side and I cannot read your expression, when my own past twirls and twinkles in my mind until I feel like I might go mad from it. I love you, but sometimes love terrifies me. 

You love me, but…

You love me but I am a hurricane and a rainbow. We are left in the wreckage of one, only to look up at the sky and smile in wonder at the other. You love me but I pen poetry about ex lovers I no longer love, just because bruised hearts make for good poetry. You love me but you falter when you see my suitcases packed, just in case the worst happens; just in case you decide to crush me in your hands instead of letting me fly free – though I promise I’ll come back to you, just like I keep doing. You love me but still, sometimes, I wonder.

You love me. But?