Falling in love feels like letting the phone ring

a poem/essay on the pain of falling

Falling in love feels like:

moonstones

instruments with strings

the word “clandescent” (not what it means, just what it sounds like)

7PM in July

heavy rain at night

growing up

letting the phone ring

biting your cheek till it bleeds

paperwork

medicine cabinets

I would know. I was, like many, so in love once. The source of my affection was a cherub-faced darling with soil colored eyes. I found our love suffocating and entirely inescapable. Lasting approximately two-months, I learned then love to be an infection that starts holy then slowly turns mortal.

I hadn’t known love before meeting my lover. I was a straight-haired homeschooled girl in a hostess uniform, entirely unassuming, entirely unbruised. Love was a faraway land with seemingly no way in. My lover entered my world and became permanent hail on my skin and thunder in my ears. I was having my breath stolen from me, my mind taken over.

I’d go to work and feel my throat drop, hiding itself within whatever concoction of fear, butterflies and breakfast existed in my stomach. I could not squeak a word in my lover's direction, manically rolling silverware became my only refuge.

Love quickly became no fun at all. Love was thinly veiled mania and stomach cramps. Love chased me to the bathroom, a $17.50 an hour panic attack.

Of course my lover wasn’t interested in me. I am a very Calm, Cool and Collected person, so this information has had no impact on me, other than serving as a complete permission slip. My lover's claw has unhanded my back. I could breathe, diaphragm fulling extending, I am free. No longer suspended mid air, falling, falling, falling.

The world quieted. I was no longer insane. I was rejected and I was untethered. I slept that night, rolling around as I liked. The bed, the city, the country was mine. I was no longer seeing my lover's face everywhere.

Some clouds took my lover's shape but they did not follow me home. I remained un-taken over. As free as I was I could not help but think it was so quiet. It’s the middle of the night and my windowsill is dry. A gnawing keeps me awake. I long for thunder.