Your love — it comes to me like a slow, sweet poison,
Creeping under my skin, latching itself to my bones — light, unseen,
Smoothing me with its luscious, bittersweet kiss of melancholia,
Ruffling me with liquid desire — the highs of first love, feverish and pristine.

Your love — it gives me away, bit by bit, unravelling the yarn of my existence.
Set to motion, my longings run asunder, from my soul to meet your body in midsummer.
Call you repeatedly. Kiss you in dark alleyways. What’s to hold me back?
The air between us is made of fireflies, blazing with our locked lips, fulfilled then, now unremembered.

Your love— it is a potent drug; it has me living on the edge of reason,
And off your caresses, your tender words, your signatures on my body’s blank canvas.
It is a white onion, peeling away its stinging layers to reveal nothing but itself,
While undressing me slowly, stripping me of all that was mine, in a state of tingling otherness.

Your love — its first rain on me was an unexpected shower in midsummer.
The taste of it was everlasting, dripping like honey, unctuous to my quivering mouth.
It lay me gently on a bed of thorns, hooked on a feeling, wrapped up in my own arbitrary nothings.
Your love — it came to me like a slow, sweet poison; its perfume still clings to my fingers, to my black shroud.

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Author: Shalini Chaturvedi

Image: Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. 

Editor: Travis May