Communion

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

—Rainer Maria

Gouache 🎨

sometimes,

I fear,

I feel too much.

The Poet, Reynier Llanes, 2021

I stood dead at a grave that was not mine

a friend of a friend long since gone, though

killing me only now.

grief is as death,

is as life,

is as humanity.

Vincent Van Gogh's painting details

i am laying flowers at the grave

of the man who killed me;

and there is nothing god could do

to stop me now.

how do i prolong love?

it’s as if I poured gasoline on my heart

lit it up

and expected it not to burn out in an instant.

I want the kind of love that smolders,

the kind that may not be passionate,

but ever present, ever warm, ever burning.

come lie with me in the embers, dearest.

we can curl up on the coals

and burn together.

something is rotting.

the smell pervades the house, wafting through the halls, seeping under the doorframes.

it’s subtle at first. easy to ignore. i turn on a fan and soon enough I’ve gone noseblind.

it’s been three days. I found a little mouse dead on the floor. it’s small. too small.

the smell gets worse. the fan is on all the time now. I put perfume under my nose to block it out. eventually, I grow numb.

a week. there is no escaping it. I have looked everywhere. it has stained all my clothes. It is here, somewhere, the source of it.

it has been months. I cannot leave. I am weak. it affects me constantly.

something is rotting.

it is me. it has always been me.

one of these days,

you will ask me to hold you,

and I will crush you in my hands.

not through any ill intent,

but out of never learning to love

and never learning the art of being gentle