if you must love me
please
don’t promise me the moon
then leave me with stardust in my hands

if you must love me
please
don’t throw me to the fire
then leave me as smouldering ashes

if you must love me
please
don’t shut me out
then leave me freezing to death

if you must love me
please
don’t excite me, make my heart beat loud like sirens
then leave me wasting alone in silence

but darling
if you’re anything like me
if you’re even half as human as i am
you’ll love me with all your might
you’ll love me like i love you
you’ll love me to the very end

but if you won’t
then please
you mustn’t love me
at all.

∗ ∗ ∗

if you must leave me
then please remain a recurring character
in this story
lest the grand finale episode as you depart
plays on repeat
on the film reel on the screen at
the back of my mind

if you must leave me
then darling, please
leave me an artifact to cry over.
the plaid scarf that you loved for chilly mornings
the handwritten grocery note
that’s lived in your pocket for millennia.
i want to be sprawled on the kitchen floor
with these rolling avalanches
persisting and subsiding in my chest.
deck the hallway with your hearty laughter
such that anytime i go through it hollow-eyed
a lump in my throat forms.
escaping laughs barred by cries; bittersweet.

if you must leave me
then darling please please promise me
you’ll be looking up at the sky every night
there was no greater intimacy we shared
than looking at the resplendent moon
and charting the constellations
and our intertwining fates.

but most of all then,
if you must leave me
then please linger near the back door
appear in my dreams as you please
or orchestrate my nightmares, it’s all the same
just stop by for tea, once in a while.
just come back home – whenever you feel like it.