a love so gentle, it might kill me | poem
♪: cinnamon girl by lana del rey
i want to touch you,
but my hands are shattered mosaics,
splinters of glass haunted by every moment
i turned love into a battlefield.
they glint like cursed stars —
seductive in their beauty,
cruel in their truth,
dripping with the venom
of all i’ve destroyed.
do you see the red staining my palms?
it isn’t mine.
it’s the aftermath of all the fires i’ve set,
desperate to feel warm.
and you —
you stand there,
steady as a lighthouse in a storm,
a tower built from moonstones,
its light cutting through
the tempest i’ve become.
but you don’t know what it’s like
to be the storm,
you don’t know how terrifying
your stillness is to someone
who’s never stopped running.
you tell me i’m safe here,
but i’ve never been safe anywhere.
you touch my face,
your thumb brushing my cheekbone
like it’s something precious,
something worth holding onto,
and i almost flinch.
not because it hurts,
but because it doesn’t.
because your touch alone
is the kind of kindness that
feels like sunlight breaking
through a forest fire,
a mercy i’ve never
learned how to survive.
you’d say, “i love you,”
and i swore the sky cracked open.
the words were tender,
your voice gentle,
but its weight crashed over me,
like the splitting of an ancient tree,
struck by a storm it braced for
but couldn’t outrun.
the words slipped into the
empty corridors inside of me,
filling rooms i thought
were condemned,
lighting fires where
i swore warmth would
never live again.
i love you.
i hate those words.
i love those words.
they taste like honey burned black.
cloying sweetness with a bitter,
acrid edge, searing into my tongue.
i’m terrified to say them back.
my mouth is full of embers.
what if my love is the wildfire that
devours you whole?
what if you run after me,
and the heat burns you too?
"you don’t have to say it back,"
you’d say, when my silence
stretched for too long,
"if just feels good to tell you."
do you know i dream of us?
in my dreams, your hands are
constellations that rewrite my scars,
turning my fractures into galaxies.
i’m the moon — pale and cold,
casting borrowed light,
hiding behind veils of shadows
because i don’t know
how to be seen. i just exist.
you’re the stars,
burning endlessly
in your quiet brilliance,
eternal in a way i’ll never be.
you reach for me,
always reaching, but
the space between us is vast,
an infinite chasm where light fades
before it can touch the dark.
i dream of pressing
my palms to your chest,
feeling your heartbeat
beneath my fingers
like the rhythm of something
i lost long ago.
i dream of the shadows
in me dissolving,
seeping into the glow
of your light,
like ink into water,
like i could give you my darkness
and take nothing in return.
but in the dream,
my hands are clean.
there’s no blood.
my heart is unscarred.
in the dream,
i’m something softer,
a loving melody
instead of a scream —
not this angry, broken thing
that tears at everything good.
you look at me,
and i feel like a firework,
a moment of vibrant color and beauty
that ends in nothing but smoke.
you don’t see the ash i leave behind.
you don’t feel the heat
of everything i can’t say.
you see the flicker,
but you don’t know the flame.
when i close my eyes,
i see your patience
as a tide — steady, relentless and
wearing down the sharp edges
i’ve spent years building.
you come back, over and over,
no matter how many times
i push you away.
but tides don’t just soothe —
they consume.
what if i am the anchor that
pulls you to the bottom?
what if my love is a rip current,
dragging you so far out you forget
what solid ground feels like?
my fears spill over like waves
crashing against cliffs.
“what if i can’t stop it?
what if i drown you?”
"i’ll swim." you’d tell me,
unshaken.
"but what if it’s too much?
what if the current pulls
you too deep? what if
you can’t reach the surface?"
"then i’ll swim." you repeated,
steady as the sea,
"i’ll swim until my arms give out,
until the salt stings my eyes
and my lungs beg for air.
i’ll extinguish your flames,
even if it means letting them
consume me first.
you don’t have to pull me
to shore alone.
i’ll find you in the deep,
no matter how far the tide
has carried you, no matter
how dark the water becomes.
i’ll fight the waves,
the weight of everything
you think you are,
until i can reach you.
and when i do,
i’ll hold on. i’ll bring us back.”
your words hit me like a hurricane,
ripping through my defences,
stripping me bare every time
and leaving nothing but a raw
certainty in their wake.
“you’re so corny,” i’d whispered,
but my chest ached as i say it.
you smile then, soft and knowing,
the kind of smile that feels
like the sun coming out after rain,
“maybe,” you’d say,
“but i’ll tell you every time
until you believe it too.”
so, tell me again.
tell me again that i’m not too much.
tell me my fire won’t
burn you to cinders,
my storms won’t
wear you down to nothing.
lie to me, if you have to.
wrap your words in
something i can hold.
let me believe, just for a moment,
that my hands could touch you
without leaving cracks,
that your light could survive
the shadows i carry.
you said, “i love you,”
and i’ve carried those words
like a flame in the dark,
cupped between trembling hands,
fragile and flickering,
but still burning.
i love you, too.
i think i’ve always loved you.
i think i always will.
but love feels like
standing on the edge of
a collapsing star, unsure if it will
illuminate or destroy.
and if i say it too loud,
if i let it shine too brightly,
i’m afraid it will pull us both
into its gravity — leaving nothing
but stardust, scattered and infinite,
drifting quietly in the void.
