Between Bruises & Blooms

I was young
when I first learned
love could look
like immortality.

Like cold hands
and golden eyes.

Like someone
standing
between you
and every danger
in the world

while somehow
also being
one of them.

Edward loved Bella
like losing her
would end
a life
that had already
lasted too long.

And maybe
that was why
I understood it.

That desperate,
terrible kind
of love

that says

if you go,
I do not know
who I am
after you.

It was dramatic.

Unhealthy
in places.

Absolutely
the kind of relationship
I would side-eye
in real life.

But God,

when I was younger,

forever
sounded romantic.

Someone choosing you
again
and again
and again

while decades
turned into centuries.

Someone looking
at all the ordinary,
messy,
human parts of you

and deciding

yes.

This one.

This life.

This girl.

Forever.

Maybe that is why
Twilight
still feels
like a house
I lived in once.

A little ridiculous.

A little haunted.

And somehow

still home.