five best romances: an open letter

let this be my gospel of ghosts - five romances, five reckonings, five prayers. let them live where they must. in the skin, in the memory, in the marrow. i don't regret them.

to the soulmate who vanished like mist before the morning,

they asked what it means to belong to another and i remembered wuthering heights - she is more myself than i am. that's what you are to me. not a reflection, but the marrow inside the bone. a thing i could not scrape out if i tried. you are the mirror in which i lost my face. there is a version of us in some hidden, green world - our dream house cradled in trees, your hands dusted in flour, your mouth half-smiling as we speak of nothing and everything. i can almost hear you humming by the oven. in some universe, i can reach for your waist in the morning light. i would defy the laws of resurrection if it meant one more day in your quiet, godless eden. even now, i know, i will always find you again. in every life, i am cursed to search.

to lyziel - the covenant in shadow,

let your name be carved. you deserve no anonymity. what we had was never simple, never safe. we flirted with ruin under fluorescent lights, touched behind the veil of friendship, cast our spells in the confines of borrowed rooms. we made altars of bedsheets and whispered promises like ancient prayers. our love was always dressed in risk, and yet, you saved me. you did. a hundred times. every unspoken i love you still hangs between the songs we used to sing. i walk past our ghost-places with a kind of ache - not regret, not shame - but joy. if the gods have sense, they will one day return us to each other. in some brighter place where we won't need to hide.

to the softest what if - the phantom limb,

you arrived like a feather on a still pond and disappeared just as quietly. you held me in the uncertain cusp between one love and the next. you taught me how simple affection could be two poets talking of sunlit balconies, hot coffee, and your cats pawing at our ankles. i remember the ride home - your concern about my health, your laugh in the wind. i replay it often. you are the library i never finished walking through. you are the book i kept by my bed but was too afraid to read to the end. some nights, when the wind rattles the windows, i swear your poems whisper to me. i have kept them all.

to the most radiant and ruinous sin,

oh, how divine you were in the darkness. you were the fire that burned without light. sweet and smoky, like incense in some forbidden temple. i licked you off my lips for weeks. you were not love; you are hunger. not a partner, a drug. i let you slip into me like night and i've never been clean since. we were not built for daylight. our worship belonged to the hour when the city sleeps, and shame walks barefoot. i still dream of your hands on my ribs, your teeth against my throat, and yet i hold myself back because going back would be a crucifixion i can't afford to survive again. you were a holy corruption and i bowed at your altar.

to the favorite muse, i'm most gracious,

with you there was clarity. you showed me the mirror and i did not flinch. you were the one i did not burn for, but with. ours was a warmth that taught, not consumed. no theatrics, no knives under the tongue. just a shared meal, a full laugh, a quiet agreement to be better, together. you held the door open. you handed me a glass of water. you left the light on. i will never stop being grateful. you reminded me that love, in its final form, does not demand to be sung - only understood.