Lizzy Burnam 🐞

There’s an inherent grief felt in falling in love: 
the grief of small spaces demolished into wide and lively rooms, 
a new greenhouse erected without glass 
as if to say, all the world grows 
and flowers here, and every songbird sings at once. 

It’s the grief of spontaneous solitude, 
romantic dates with self in front of the bathroom mirror, 
plucking eyebrow hairs and admiring 
the curves of one’s own body, owned and operated 
by the same controlled breath. 

It’s the grief of little private deaths avoided, 
of no longer being the eye of the storm. 
Then the tidying comes, and the promise of a changed life, 
even if no promise can be made about the quality 
and longevity of the life thereafter. 

It’s the grief of trying to fit all this distance—this spectatorship 
of the artist alone, this long race lost anyway, 
even running as far and fast as the armored heart 
could go. The breaking open 
to make room for one more mine, one more mine. 

We call it falling for a reason, as if sacrificed 
like a goat to the volcanic pit of burgeoning intimacy. 
But love, like grief, is an active sentiment. 
We jump on purpose, pining after the heat, then despair 
of the burn; metamorphosed by you metamorphosed by me.