whale fall/ i will always love you

the remnants of the love we know embed themselves within us, we inherit habits, we inherit ideas, we inherit fears, we inherit pain and it embellishes us even if the love alters- even if the love was rotten, we do not get to choose what we inherit.

they course through us as we continue to live, they teach us and they break us, they confuse us and remind us that we are containers and vessels of what we know, that love contains the chaos and aching joy and growth and unjustness of life itself. that is what we inherit, that is what we pass on.

the corpse of a whale will fall to the bottom of the ocean and a multitude will gorge on it until it's only bones - the dead sustains the living.

i will be too scared to watch and listen to things we watched and listened together. i will always remember how you looked when you called me beautiful. i will always think about walking into a forest and walking until i reach the sea. i will always struggle to sleep alone.

the bones will erode in the tide, will turn to sand, will turn to dust, as will the fish, the sea will continue, the reef will continue, life will gorge itself when it can, life will persevere when it can, brutalise when it can, make no sense but give us hints as it dances its dance and we have to decide how we feel about being four steps behind. love brings us back to this strangeness and gives us the tools to understand it, gives us tools we can use, alter, share.

i find myself thinking about death, about what i would say or do upon my own or upon the death of someone i know. all i can picture is saying the same words until they can no longer be spoken or until they can no longer be heard:

"i love you, i love you

i love you"

i can't think of anything else i'd want to express in the end.