Love Blooms

“I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

by Chayla Jaye Venzon

I'm not romantic

The borrowed kisses, familiar touches

Sweet words before sleep—

The goodbye to an empty bed—

Become a faint nostalgia

A whisper I’ll always never want to hear

Forced laughter, old trophies

Late nights in the passenger seat

After home games, after store runs

Cheap answers from school days,

Nine to five weariness that tightens our every breath.

When did we get comfortable clutching the heirloom jewelry That stretches between us, Waiting for the wrong sigh

To snap what is always restrung?

I look away for one second and the thin strand pulls apart, Bringing the fight we were no strangers to.

I watch the sharpied glass on the windows through my self Broken over, repaired With cheap apathy and apology to apology to apology That tried but never truly satisfied us. The cycle of jitters overcomes us at every wrong word

When your fire comes and throwing sand doesn’t work I must walk into it

So the flames don’t lash on another face— Embrace another pile of flesh.

A fire that I once knew as warm, nurturing in its light Has somehow stripped away every sliver of my skin

I know that your promises to change Will be realized when Sisyphus finally makes it to the top. You’ll tinder underneath the brush, Letting the wind take advantage of your docility Until I breathe into a spot of flame, Recreate the suffocation—

A fire to remake me as you’ve said To burn off the dead skin, to reveal the fresh pink It’s what’s best for me what’s best for me What is best for me?

I bear every echo and unwanted memory Carrying a box filled with school notebooks, Old pictures, chewed gum

As you ask me how my day was Or look at me as I am a silver glass to you And for a second your pride destroys Every notion that our love is normal And will forever bury itself deep into my skin Your skin