Discursive Love

by Cortland Gilliam

Conversation lulls

Lips part and peel

Something, somewhere, swells

Mind streamrolls heart

I love you's lasso'd and tethered to tonsils

Clearing cough appeases

Words congested in the back of throat

Like mucus,

"Love is clingy,

but not like this...

Not like grasping for ghosts

never believed in;

Not like holding onto someone

who was never there to begin with."

Photo by Zach Ealy.