I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am…You are a shit.

He loved her in a subtle kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of love you see in movies, with swelling music and giant gestures and running through the streets to catch a departing train. It wasn’t the kind of love that Byron or Shakespeare wrote about, with flowery language and hyperbole and iambic pentameter. It was still and deep, like water that you might mistake for shallow if you just watched the surface. It was entirely his, not dependent on her own feelings for him, and it would still be there whether she, or him, or everyone else on the world disappeared. It was a subtle kind of love, but it was true.

You asked me once to describe
a panic attack. Words are lost.
The butterflies go rogue, moving
from your stomach to your heart.
The walls you have spent your
lifetime building crumble on you.
The breath your mother gave
you is lost. Nowhere to be found.
You put out a ransom, “if found,
return to” posters, but there are
no results. Your steady hands
shake uncontrollably. Your
body is not your own. The only
was I can describe it is pure
terror. I had seven a day for
three weeks after you left.