Love is such a funny thing.
Falling in love, especially.
I wanted it so badly, ever since I was a child.
The way it was painted in stories, the way it was promised,
like a fairy tale, like some sort of salvation.
And how could love not be romanticized?
But love isn’t the problem.
It never was.
It’s the falling.
Because falling is exactly what it is.
A plunge from an airplane with no proof of a parachute.
A descent from a cliff with the harness left unfastened.
A freefall, weightless and helpless, with no promise of landing safely.
It is, in the end, a kind of death.
Always a death.
Whether in the vows of til death do us part or in the slow, quiet undoing before…
one of us will not survive the other.
And me? I am still falling.
I used to think if I fell hard enough,
if I threw myself into it with everything I had,
the landing wouldn’t matter.
That love itself would catch me, hold me, keep me safe.
That devotion was enough to soften the ground.
But love isn’t made of hands,
it isn’t made of safety.
It is an unknown we step into willingly,
mistaking the wind against our skin for flight.
And for a time, it does feel like flying.
But the body can only take so much.
And the fall… it never fucking ends.
There is no warning before the impact,
no mercy in how we break against each other.
It’s not quick.
It’s not clean.
It’s slow.
It’s cruel.
And still, I keep my arms open,
as if I can slow the descent.
As if I can stop what’s coming.
As if love was ever anything more than gravity,
or the ground waiting to swallow me whole.