Olive Juice

"you are my most beautiful mistake."

you are my most beautiful mitake. some days, I find myself living

you are my most beautiful mistake. some days, I find myself living in the past tense as I try to breathe in the present like deciding to drown in the sea of all our memories. like the day we slow-danced in my living room and I breathed you in like your afternoon skin was my favorite perfume. like the time i told you i love you five times in a row so i could tattoo the words on our shared pillow. [i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you] your smile said "i know" and mine said "i need you to." like the night i described how my grandfather died and i was twenty minutes too late to wish him goodbye so i held in my mind my brightest stars and i begged my love to run to him like one last desperate prayer. do you remember? do you remember how you held me then as i turned our bed into an ocean? our very first kiss didn't make me weak in the knees, the only word for it is electric and our current made me tell you i loved you after fourteen days. and fuck, i meant it. i meant it all throughout our first year. i meant it for a few months during our second. i couldn't bear to say it anymore by our third. are you scared? are you scared that i'll forget? because i am. i am scared that all along, we were mistaken. that we wasted time staking claims on each other's skin that we were wrong in talking about our futures like conquerors unafraid of a foreign land's fresh terrors. baby, i want to call you my best error you are my broken mirror, my three years of bad luck you were a truck speeding, drunk driving the perfect face, my safe place my "fuck this shit i am done" my "promise me you'll never be gone" my "i never wanted this to end" my "hit me harder" my "fuck me faster" my favorite monster, the key on my string every time i lost myself in your lightning the wrong decision made with no hesitation the "thank god for all our yesterdays" my "i want her memory dead today."

by Jamie Delos Reyes