It must infect me, must spread rapidly like the virus we all secretly believe that it is. It must pierce my cynicism, bleed through the memories that diseased it the first time, will me to relinquish my yearlong remission.

This love must invade.

Love, crack open my broken ribcage, reach in, begin, get elbow-deep in clogged capillaries, root through the detritus other strains left behind, balloon past abandonment and through the veins I have knotted to block you, remain–even if I code. You should be worth the flatline, worth the sear of defibrilating paddles. Please. Please, be worth the crackle of nerves. Resurrect their deadened endings.

Dissolve the stitches of past disappointments. Glue my skin; seal yourself in. May there never be seepage. Absorb my longings; though they be many, fulfill them–even if they must be liquefied, bagged, and dripped intraveneously. This time, I will sacrifice nothing; I will not go undernourished.

I will be pressed to walls, wrists pinned to the optic white, to the blood orange borders, to the sharpened and beveled mirrors. So fortify my spine, shoot rods into weakened discs. I will need iron in my backbone. No must be non-negotiable–even through tremors and twitches and the offer of alternative medicines. And so also must yes be resolute–even if it would be easier to treat you in stages and sessions, until you’ve subsided and solved.

I will die either way–with you or without you. You will be a germ to which I am exposed, even if I never contract you again. You will either be in the air I breathe or the reason that I breathe it.

But I would rather you leave me restless, heaving, gutted, gasping than as undisturbed as you’ve left me thus far. I am still and unsuspecting as a clean bill of health, but I miss the fever, the fainting, your vapors.

Make your peace with my apothecary. Convince him to pour you, distilled. I will drink of you, straight from the bottle. I will wait for each poisonous wave.