Most people don’t think that love
Is when your lips wrap around a cigarette
And you take a long inhale,
Letting your throat burn before your lungs do.

Love doesn’t look like cigarette butts
Littering the floor of your 2001 Mercury Sabel.
Your clothes have smoke laced in the stitches
And after being with you for so long,
My clothes have become adventures on their own.
All of your jackets smell like mistakes
And your knuckles are purple
From meeting too many bad choices.

Those who fall in love
With the way their tongue taste like ashes
Are the type that often kiss in the dark
Because the light strips everything
From its anything that could be beautiful.

Apologies aren’t the same as “I love you’s.”
Sorry for not answering your text
And sorry for lighting up
As your wrap yourself in the bed sheets.
Sorry I crashed your car
Because I was too busy watching your smile
Instead of watching the road.
And I’m so damn sorry
That I shake whenever you speak.
Sorry I’m just not that strong.
Your pretty words aren’t meant for people like me.
People like me
Deserve apologies instead of “I love you’s.”

The smoke that fills the air between us
Is the closest to a hug you’ll get.
Because if you wrap your arms around me
I’ll rip at my edges
Like the seams of your shirt on a cold day.
I can’t stand the touch of another love
Unless it’s the burn against my skin
From another smoke you told me not to light.
And I’m sorry I don’t love you as much.

Being in love
Means stubbing out the cigarette
And lighting the new one
Because my nerves need to be calm
Before I get the courage to speak to you.
It’s been three years
And each year is more time for me
To work on myself before I can work on us.
But there is no more us
So there is no more me.
You wrote me a letter and asked me to write back.
You even sprayed it with fruity perfume
And I remember buying you that scent
Because your mother told you to stop smelling like me
Even if you loved it.

Because you loved me.

No one falls in love with a monster

Because that’s not what love looks like.

That’s not what love is.