this is a warning label for the intended use, side-effects, and contraindications of this scale of loving
vayne altapascine
you are advised to see the opinion of a loved (?) one before making use of a love like this. it is a loving of such scale that eulogies will be written for longer than the lives spent writing about it. it is knowing all the contours of someone’s face and the worries in their voice, the waver in their spirit, and the wonder in the half of their heart they lost to time. love like this is total. it is immediate and simultaneously an effort so slow and miniscule that it is akin to trying to bag the grains of sand it will take to count the stars. it is concrete made stable and a river harbored resolute. it is only for the faint of heart.
please note that this kind of heartache is not meant for people who love perfect. on the other hand, if you are not prepared to love only enough, if you are yearning with such intensity that your body hurts to contain it all, if you are wanting for reasons other than simply wanting, then this medication is for your use. you will drown in it and you will accept dying to it. of course, if this weren’t true, you weren’t going to read the label anyway, were you?
off-label use may result in significant difficulties in the enjoyment of loving and questioning whether love is worth it at all. this is, however, your fault and your unimpeachable desire to want for reasons other than merely wanting is symptomatic of your own illness. ask your doctor, your family, your friends, and especially your significant other if they can detect how much lying there is when you say “i love you.”
side-effects of this medication include slow-dancing in the middle of a hotel room hallway, sharing kisses under weeks-old blankets, sharing fast food on the tile-broken floor, painting used cardboard for half-worthy school subjects together, writing essays in the middle of a commute, worrying about how soon it will be before you see each other again, making poetry books about singular individuals, building routines, ruins, and prayers for longing long past its age, crying to a god you don’t believe in hoping she’ll save you this time but hoping she doesn’t answer because that means you didn’t deserve it the first time either, wanting to walk roads you don’t know to find meaning that isn’t there, burning artworks that once meant something but really never did, wondering how it’s possible for the refrigerator light to be just this bright, and hurting so badly that hurting is the only thing your words can meaningfully express (not even joy or relief or adoration or anger, because these have been numbed by the unwavering crashing waves of loneliness and grief.)
ask your physician for alternatives if you’re not suffering enough.