When You Look At Someone And Realize You’re Going To Fall In Love

When you look at someone and realize, eventually, you’re going to fall in love with them,
it can feel like an emergency waiting room.
The nurses station, a tangled mess.
People in never-ending lines,
Just ants spreading themselves out every which way like graffiti on an underpass.
Questions echo in your eardrums,
Chaos
And order,
And nothing that really makes sense.
And you’re just sitting there,
waiting to be seen,
Hoping for results that don’t show something fatal.
Something with no recovery.
Something like love.

Love is a difficult thing to diagnose.
The symptoms can fit under a lot of things:
Rapid heartbeat.
Difficulty concentrating.
Doing the same thing over and over,
and expecting a different ending.
Shortness of breath.
Dizziness.
Nausea.
Hallucinatory dreams.
Dreaming of that person when you’re wide awake,
Wishing they were there
holding you.
Maybe you’re developing some mysterious disease.
Maybe,
you’re just dehydrated.
You could spend too much energy and time on WebMD trying to figure out this thing you have.
This condition.
Incurable desire to kiss him
when he’s next to you asleep.
And you lift your fingers to trace the curve of his shoulderblade.
Think how you’ve never noticed how perfect a shoulder blade can be.
That you want to drink every insecurity from his lips,
Suck out every bit of poison the ones before left.
Left this perfect shoulder blade
That you hang from like monkey bars.
Back when you never had any reservations about what it would feel like to fall.
Just climbed up as high as little feet could reach.
But there is a first time for everything.
And when your face hits the concrete, it is not as simple to forget that losing your balance is always a possibility.

That love is responsible for the best things and the worst.
The greatest fantasies,
and greater tragedies.
That for every moment of floaty-cloud nine perfection,
there will be days when everything hurts.
When you will roam the aisles in the pharmacy, ransack the building looking for a damn pill,
Or supplement,
Something to help the overwhelming ache in your bones.

You might wonder if it’s worth the trouble.
If he’s worth the trouble with his perfect shoulder blades and ability to play your heart like a game console.
Press A and it will jump.
Press B and it just might explode.
Fuck, I don’t know,
I don’t play video games,
and did I mention another side effect is using too many metaphors
when really all you’re trying to say is…

All I’m trying to say is

I’m going to fall in love with you,

And the doctor said there’s nothing he can do.