This Love

This love tugs

Autumn at leaves

A child at its mother's sari

It shrieks in silence

A painting on exhibit

Sings sans lyrics

Its melody a slight quiver of the lips

Or your fingertips pressing on my collarbone

Gliding down my ribs

One rung at a time

For the latter we have plenty

Hours wrapped around sticks like cotton candy swallowed in a lone minute

Sentences strung out of elbows bumping, toes curling

This love breathes

Hot and heavy

A forgotten glass of whiskey

It slams doors and breaks windows

Letters tied to stones that never reached your floor

It cracks

My fist against the mirror

Wood in the fire

It rustles

That teel cocktail dress I wore last summer

Trees hung low in a secret murmur

It bites, nibbles perhaps

At biscuits, you wouldn't let me dip in your tea

At the shell of my ear when I got that third piercing

This love hates

Cold like that one February evening I stood in the rain waiting for the taxi

And you weren't there to lend me your coat

But its fabric still made my arms itch

Hot like the coffee I spilled over myself when the lyrics to some song I can't recall at the moment hit a little too close to home

It slips

Like that pearl ring I lost on a midnight bus ride back home on Christmas eve

This love loves

When it's too angry to talk to you and too far to kiss and make up

But will still play to you your impromptu 'sleep playlist' over the phone till you fall asleep.

When we sit on either side of the table and text emojis because we are no poets and eloquence is something we left better to the millennials

This love pops its knuckles

And takes another hit

Coughs up blood

Gets back inside the ring

Stubborn idiot

Egoist

Maniac

It gets called names

And this love still wants

And this love still

And this love

And this

And.