if my love for you is enough

if my love for you is enough, you can come over and i'll draw your face with blue paint. i'll let you draw scars around my corium where i took a sharp metal. tell you the stories behind them as we laugh-cry our way through the trauma. if my love for you is enough, i can train my body to not flinch at your hand. we can sit in my two room apartment and pretend to have the world to ourselves. i can prance around in my red dress and a bow, and have you look at me like you did when we first closed the door behind us. you'll lay out your dimple as bait and i would kiss the corners of your mouth. you'll make a quip on our setting and i would let my mouth linger on your dimple. when i hold your face in my palm, it's the only time deciding to live at thirteen makes sense. when you are talking to my inner child and singing me a goo goo dolls song, it's the only time life has been kind to me.

if my love for you is enough, i can finally abolish my memory of my life before you. it's all a blurry line and days of staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing. it's all memories of me waiting for the Great Perhaps and going to sleep disappointed. if my love for you is enough, let me bare all my secrets to you. yes, i waited for the hogwarts letter for a long time before giving up. yes i spent more time in my bathroom than i ever did at the dinner table. yes i remember the first scar. and the second and the seventh and the tenth. yes i waited for you a long time, before settling for the stopgaps that came before you. yes i orchestrated all the days before you fell in love with me. and if you ask me, i would do it in every lifetime. i will find you and make sure you know that you are fated to belong to me.

if my love for you is enough, i will put down the masks forever. stop painting my face pink and my hair red. stop tucking my stomach in and breathing a little less. the only time i feel pretty is when your brown irises linger on my face for longer than ten seconds. in those ten seconds, the world is on my feet. or more precisely, on my arms. if my love for you is enough, we can run away from our homes. i will make you burnt toast and salty eggs and you'll call it the best meal of your life. we'll sleep to rzeznik's voice in the background, while you tonelessly sing along to "do you wanna get married". i'll answer it the same way i have answered every question in the last two years. a yes, yes and yes. a hundred times, yes.

if my love for you is enough, will you help me clean my body of all the mire engraved on it? can it put out the fires in my throat? can it undo all the mistakes i beat myself up for? can it help me stop seeing life as a labyrinth? the last time i felt grateful for being a human, we were dancing in a kitchen. the last time i felt grateful for being a human, we were shopping for baby clothes. the last time i felt grateful for being a human, you kissed all my scars, the last time i felt grateful for being a human, we were riding to the airport. i'm always wearing your chain around my neck. it's my favorite story to tell people. sometimes i wonder if associating every love song in my playlist with a person was ever a good idea. then i think about you whispering all of them to me as i sleep, and i tell myself, 'yes', there's no one else they are meant for.

i know my love for you is enough because it's been 638 days and you haven't run away yet. you've seen the leaking roofs and the burnt walls and you've taken your bandaids to all of the corners. you've seen a future when i stopped believing in one; you've seen me when i didn't come out of my grief for days. i know my love for you is enough because you love my silly drawings where you barely look human. because you believe in my fairytales and you learned to love hurricanes just because i am one. i know my love for you is enough because you've said it to me for every day we have spent in love. or on other days, i don't have to ask. there's always some telepathic way i just know it.

i know my love for you is enough because we are twin flames, after all. and your love has been enough for me for every autumn i have spent being something you love. your love has bridged the gaps and mended the bruises. it has stopped the blood from flowing and has made the ceiling blurry. i used to look at the ceiling and wish my feet didn't touch the floor. now i stare at the ceiling and i tell you we will make stars above us when we have a home to ourselves. i know your love is enough because i finally can see the Great Perhaps that rabelais talked about. i can call you up and tell you i'm flying and you'll ask is 'how does it feel' and not the cynical 'how are you even flying'.

someday my love would be enough to make up for all the birthdays you spent without a cake at midnight. someday your love would be enough for the demons in my past to never know my domicile. or if i'm even alive or not. someday my love would be enough for you to trust the waters again. because you'll know i'll be at the shore, ready to dive in should you lose your breath. someday your love would be enough to stop the swarm of cruel voices in my head. someday your love would be enough for me to save myself, from me.

nibir/ my love is mine all mine