Love Is

I bought handmade paper this morning. 


It's light purple, rough in texture, with stray bits of dark fiber poking through in places. It's clean, though it has its faults. Bits you can't write on. Parts of it you can't change.


It's unblemished. There are no stains.


There's something I find endearingly vulnerable about it. 


I bought a black marker. The darkest black - like night, or velvet. Or a tiger stripe. Like darkness.


I etched the words "I LOVE YOU" - in block letters, exactly like that, onto my light lilac paper. 


I watched the dark ink seep into the accommodating texture of the paper, like poison. 


Almost like carving something into stone. Or etching words into someone's bones, so that you can make sure you'll always be a part of them, even if it hurts them.


I ran my fingers over where I'd etched the words in, imagining the mistakes I'd made by doing so. 


How I could never erase the marking, and the paper was irrevocably soiled, stained, made impure.


Love is a dark black permanent marker on a lilac sheet of handmade paper.

You wrote in lead and graphite and dropped vowels, forgot punctuation and misspelled words. The same ones - I and love and you.


But look at me, now. 


I'm giddy with the smell of acetone. I know it probably won't remove the stains, but at least they're fading. Faded.

When I'm done with the bottle of acetone and I drop the bottle into a garbage bag, seal it cleanly shut and throw it out the door, you'll disappear too.

And I won't remember you anymore.