Here’s a secret. That night in the car, when it was dark all around us and that song was playing. The kind you stay silent to hear. Our hands grazed, just barely. I think that was supposed to be it, the moment I felt love, felt something unfamiliar taking root in my body. Instead, I remember something like dread worming its way into my chest, and I could see the beginning and the end of us all at once. I had given you goodness and left none for myself. It was a slow, crushing revelation, a stone sinking through water. I’ve never considered myself a prophet, but for a moment I felt like Gideon. My ears started ringing, and it sounded like divinity.
*
It’s been a long time - my hair’s different now, and so is everything about you. Maybe one day I’ll stop indulging my proclivity for self-destruction, but I don’t think love will ever really be for me. Sometimes I feel it all around me, vast and wicked; in the grass, by the ocean, between the mundane shelves of a market. I feel it like a panic attack, a sharp inhale that leaves my eyes brimming. Not in the way I’m supposed to. Not in the way you do. Nothing about this will ever be quiet.
*
Everything’s an impulse for me. I think I always needed love to hurt, to bleed. Secretly, I still swear I’ve got it right, but your guess is as good as mine. When you touched me you didn’t know you were glancing over a thousand fractured pieces. Broken bottles, wine dregs and apricot stones, folded up notes kept in a little tin. Maybe some things should stay unexplored. God, you should see when you’re not around.
*
I read somewhere that supermassive black holes sing - when they consume surrounding matter, they emit x-ray bursts. When it’s millions of them, NASA said it’s like a “raucous choir”. I think I hear it sometimes, that inexplicable symphony.