love on credit

I know I’m supposed to feel guilty

(for admitting this), but I can’t wait

until I’ve checked off enough points

on your checklist; am finally

“healed enough” for you to love me;

done more for my “healing journey;” sat rigidly through more sessions of therapy

which only help me marginally;

make me want to set my throat on fire with truth;

plunge my pointer and middle fingers up towards my uvula

to help me choke up, or down depending, how much “work

[I] have to do!” I know the bliss of counting

will create an air so sweet it’ll be hazy;

blurry with blotchy hints of blue and pink

surrounding edges of love beyond borders,

binaries; labels and limits. but why is waiting on healing

like genetically engineering a baby between Einstein

and Bob Ross; Beethoven and Marley; Tchaikovsky and Mitski?

I don’t understand this imperative you wove into me

to want to love you so endlessly; on credit: unconditionally.

I am used to paying everything debit

and being so shamelessly and immediately done with it.

but now, I love on credit; save all of my receipts.

I’ve stuffed every memory of us into the same drawer

where I keep my expired prescriptions

I’m too anxious to call my primary care doctor and admit

I stopped taking months ago—precisely at the end of us.

but I guess calling would solidify the “us” now being one…

so, I save things: the pill bottle you gave me solely for blunts;

the empty bottle of Tylenol you bought me for chronic migraines

dating you brought out of me; the Converse I wore

each time I stood on my tippy toes to kiss you in the rain.

they’re the most trifling and minuscule; meek and inconsequential

relics of tangibility; much like how whole you ever felt to me.

I guess that’s why I always clutched on to you so passionately,

standing there so childishly-hopelessly—kissing you in the rain.