You were everything and too much. Not sweet, not quiet, but alive in a way that made me tremble. Every glance, every demand, a flame that burned me open while I whispered, Yes, I’ll follow you anywhere. We loved like fools, perfectly wrong, inventing a language only we could hear, a world that sparkled in your hands and trembled in mine. I thought I had the whole sky in you, until I realized you were taking the stars and I couldn’t even hold the moon. You controlled, you pulled, you carved your shape into my chest, and I let you, because I wanted to be swallowed. Because you made me believe that to be consumed was to be loved. And I did love you. Oh, I loved you like fire in the bones, like something I could not speak without breaking into confession. Even now, months later, my chest aches to hear your voice in the dark corners of memory, like the taste of something smooth and burning I shouldn’t want...but do. You stole pieces of me and yet left me craving, longing for the same hands that bruised, the same eyes that terrified, the same voice that promised warmth while setting me aflame. I will never go back. I will never give you that power again. But my heart… my heart still drinks you in quietly, savoring the heat of the nights, the sting of being claimed and lost, the subtle warmth that lingers like a whiskey aftertaste I am both cursed and grateful to remember. Maybe time will lay the last brick, maybe the ruins will settle into something I can carry, something I can call mine. But the memory of you of us will always taste like fire and honey, like love and loss, like the first sip I never should have taken. Uffda.