“When I was sixteen I fell in love with a boy who had an entire world inside of him that I was convinced I could spend the rest of my life living in but the world has a way of tearing you apart. I promised I’d love him forever because when I was sixteen I didn’t know that forever really only lasts until your insides spill out and stain the carpet until neither of you can get it out this time or he falls in love with a girl who looks sort of like you but she’s a hurricane that anyone would kill to get caught in the middle of and you’re still afraid of thunder. When I was eighteen I fell in love with a boy who kissed like a car crash on the edge of the earth and told me he’d love me forever. And I swallowed the blood on the tip of my tongue, still pouring from the back of my throat from the end of the world two years before and I told him I’d love him as long as it lasts. because I will. I will love you. I’ll love you with every bone in my body and all the cracks between them. I’ll love you so hard it could start a fire that could melt you back together and burn away everything bad into smoke that won’t make you cough or choke you up the way the things in your head always would. I will love you as long as it lasts. I’ll love you until the carpet is dripping with spilled words and bruises that won’t fade. I’ll love you until you meet a girl who tastes like lighting from a storm. I will be yours until I’m not. I will love you until I don’t because I am sick of my mouth filling with blood every time I try to fall in love and I don’t want to find myself trying to pick the skin off my bones a few months from now when we’ve really fucked it up and I’ve forgotten how to sleep without you. When it ends, I won’t cry. I won’t find ways to kill myself with all the things you’ve let behind. I’ll smile and spit the blood out of my mouth and walk away. I will not find myself shaking over you in the middle of the night until my teeth crack or throwing up in the bathroom at a party because you walked in with your new girlfriend. I will not miss your voice or try and kiss you when I’m drunk and I can’t tell if the burning in my chest is from you or where the alcohol hit. I’ll love you as long as it lasts and when it ends I’ll kill the girl who loved you and leave her in the box of all the things that smell like you and I will bury her in the backyard and sometimes I might cry for her when it rains but I won’t cry for you.”
