Love Life

Love Life

By Eve Zennarrow

Love is but a feral, recursive chant,
spinning in circles until the leash
becomes a noose. Its whole mechanism is made
of rusty nails, and it wouldn’t last even if
I were to tattoo your name on my ribs
and feel it every time I take a breath.

Life is but a stencil on a wall —
shapes are different, but content is always
imprisoned by the limits of a finite form.
Inside, our synapses spark like Io’s volcano,
fishing for meaning in an ocean
of all the horrors we’ve numbly scrolled past.

Love is but a hypnotic, nerve-juggling ride,
a psychedelic warning breach,
waltzing on a sinking ship,
the most sinister of all lies on amphetamines,
the mirage we desperately cling to, stumbling over
our own needs buried in a foggy, overgrown cemetery.

Life is but a flickering
cigarette in the dark,
burning down to the filter.
A lighter that scorches your thumb,
just enough to make you cry out:
“Does any of this matter?”

Love is but a whiplash from comfort
to catastrophe — a low-blood-sugar hallucination,
a strawberry with a razor blade inside so
sharp it cuts its own meaning in half.
A time machine with only one button: Regret.

Life is but a 911 call transcript,
sold as a self-help book and
printed on edible paper.
I placed it by my unopened skincare serums.
My face is still flawless. My soul is still empty.

Yet sometimes,
I’d foolishly wonder —
do you ever think of me?