i wanted to fall in love slowly like a music box, like an old city, like there was nothing else to do in the world except grow into each other like twin ivies embracing the spaces the other left behind, like rot, finding its way to the center of fruit flesh, and twice as overpowering. then when we part as we inevitably will, i want love to haunt me like a vengeful ghost, rattling all my corners and hallways. making its way down the corridors, turning everything to winter. i want it so big there will be no poetry to hold it. no music in the aftermath. only the memory that remains long after we are gone.