love is a fireplace

as soon as he walks in,
i quietly fear his departure.

“i’m starving,” he says.

how fitting.
always starving.
always wanting. always empty

this is how it starts.
not with love,
but with the idea of being wanted.
being needed.
being the one who gets chosen—
even if it’s just for now.

the edge of my seat:
stainless steel. cushionless.
a stool, not a chair.

i spend the whole day waiting for his arrival.
then once he’s here, all i do is wait
for his departure.

the edge of my seat again.
where is he?
he’s here, but he stares at the ceiling
while i stare at him.

this is the descent.
not loud, not cinematic—
just a slow forgetting of myself.

i quietly hope
he does enough drugs to love me today.

“do you have any left?” he says.

i do.
i give him my last one.
i’d rather feel the ache of withdrawal from drugs
than the ache of withdrawal from love

drugs hurt my body.
love corrodes my mind.

love is supposed to hurt, right?
it’s supposed to drain you.
my mind tells me this is the cost.
this is what love looks like.

i mention her name to see what he looks like.
each time, he doesn’t flinch.

yet i know—
deep within me—
she’s there the moment i look away.

why am i not worth staying for?
why am i not her?

i’d rather be the second choice—desired,
not the girl you have to be perfect for,
not the one who asks,
who sets standards so high you run
to the girl you call a whore.

but who’s really the whore?

you’ll call this love for a long time, babe.
but please know—it’s not.
it’s compulsion, survival, hunger wearing love’s trench coat.

you’ll learn the ache in your chest and stomach
isn’t desire.
it’s your body’s alarm system,
and you’ve been silencing it.

this is recognition—
not lightning,
but climbing.
it can’t happen all at once—
not a revelation,
erosion:
a shift you barely notice
until everything’s reshaped.
a wince when he touches you.
a chill when he says her name.
a moment of seeing yourself in the mirror
and not recognizing the girl you became.

you’ll ask why you stayed.
why you gave.
why you made yourself so small
just to be held in his palm.

you’ll remember how it started—
not with love,
but with wanting to be enough.

you’ll think the answer is: be less.
less jealous.
less emotional.
less needy.

and then you’ll learn
what you need
is more.
more self-respect.
more boundaries.
more truth.

eventually, you walk away.
not with fury—
but with silence.
with breath.
with nothing left to prove.

you won’t even believe it at first.

and one day, you’ll meet someone who stays.
and you’ll cry—
not because you miss the chaos,
but because you finally don’t.

this is emergence. coming home.
the house you build brick by brick
tumbling down

you never needed a steadier house
you needed to enjoy the rise and the fall. 
because eventually, there would be a calm underneath 
every storm.
an ocean
a tree with shade

because love is not a firecracker—
not something that explodes, burns, and vanishes.

love is a fireplace:
warm, steady, certain.