Historians believed that love is
a myth invented by the desperate, 
a fleeting dream
that dissolves like mist,
the hollow of a chest that 
holds something precious,
the shards of a mirror 
reflecting fragments of a soul,
a conjurer's trick.
Scientists believed that love is 
a chemical reaction,
a spark of dopamine and serotonin 
igniting brain cells,
a flame that flickers
with every whisper,
a pipeline with clogged metaphors,
something rationality can't explain.
Poets believed that love is a bruise
that blooms in the darkness,
a flower unfurling in the silence
a magneta tongue stumbling
over the syntax of the heart, 
a phantom limb aching in monsoons,
a seaside story before a storm.
And if you ask me what love is, 
I may call it 
a fist of sweetness like a guava,
a summoning to surrender
to the void,
a substance that goes with prayers,
a pattern of sorrow that 
I've learned to read,
a dialect that only 
the broken can understand.
I will call it by your name,
and beg to teach me live.

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