Love burns. It burns like crazy, it engulfs me in high-intensity heat so fervently that it scorches me all over. I melt. I melt like cheap candles — all over the place. My eyes melt burnt wax, my tears feel so hot that my cheeks can no longer contain my mouthful cries. Love hurts. It hurts like crazy.

All the longing, the extended absences, the withdrawal, the unnecessary pining, the expected traits of love; I wonder if they were all worth the price that had to be paid. Love is nothing but a yearned prelude to pain, like a moth to a flame, leading itself to its ultimate demise. As if I was one with the waves, seeking the shore only to hit the rocks and scatter everywhere.

I built a house for us. I carved our names on our walls — like there was once an indentation of your name inside my brain — and I made us a garden, a garden filled with thornless roses. I watered our crops and flowers with my tears, tears that I shed everyday. For once, our blood-curdling argumentations made our grass much greener.

Then I lost you. I lost you in the middle of our crops and my strength wasn’t enough to uproot our groves of trees. Our garden has become a forest so vast that it trapped you in it. I lost. I lost this battle. I just want you back.

I admit. I just want you back. I want us back. I want to make it right by doing the wrong things for you. For you, I would fall from grace and forgive all of your mistakes just to lie on a field of a thousand roses with you.

Is it love? Is it love that I’m in? Is it just blinded ego, like deer in the headlights — unable to see anyplace else? How can I seek refuge in someplace else if I still feel sheltered by you that is a thousand miles away? How can I take shelter from the rain if that is the only remnant from my memories of you — cold, loud, and blaring?

You are long gone. I know. I know I’m betting on losing dogs. But how do I love anyone else? I want to, but how? How can my heart pound for someone else if it used to beat for you and you only? How can I move on when you’ve always been the unstoppable force to my immovable object?

How can I run from you when I’m imprisoned by my own needs and wants of you? Can I find someone else to free me, to break free, to give me my wings back after I’ve been kept grounded for so long? When I reach out my hand, will it be yours that take it, or will it be someone else’s?

And when I found someone else, would there be much love to give — after you?