Don’t fall in love with me.I’ll kiss you in public until ourtongues tangle and the policewill have to arrest us for beingtoo vulgar.I’ll make inappropriate jokes andI can be loud enough to get uskicked out of the mall.I won’t wake up early in themorning just to get breakfastwith you.I won’t comfort you at 2am duringthe rain—I am the storm.I won’t really chase after youthe way you want me to because Idon’t give a single fuck aboutour conflicts. I don’t want smalltalk—I want the universe as atopic.Don’t fall in love with me,because I’m drowning in the seaof anxiety and even the seamonsters have learned how to stayaway at the scent of my blood.I won’t be like sugar beneathyour lips—I’ll be the salt inyour open wounds.I’ll be the flowers growing fromyour ribcage but with thorns—beautiful but it’s gonna bepainful with every single moveyou’d make.I’ll be at your doorstep at nightbegging you to stay when you growtired of me, but I’ll see youlike a tree house where I canlive in for days without wishingfor the solid ground, but stillI’d leave you hanging from thattree when I get bored of you.You’ll wake up every morning tothe scent of flowers and the sea,and I will capture you like amoth to flames until thescorching heat burn your skin.I’m a monster with a devilishgrin, so don’t fall in love withme, you don’t know what you’regetting into.(g.t.)artwork by Chiara Bautista