mantra

He didn’t believe in deserving people, I learned. It had been an entire lifetime of filling every hollow space inside my body with the mantra of “I don’t deserve you” – stuffing it in-between my organs, pouring it into my blood vessels (so they could supply every cell in my body with it), ingesting it with every meal, injecting it into my skin through every pore, breathing it into my lungs, using it as lube during sex, and using it as lube during heartbreak. It had been a lifetime and now, for fuck’s sake, he didn’t believe in deserving people. It’s like the universe gave me a lifetime to become religious only for the love of my life to be an atheist. It’s like I grew up on a farm with flying cows, inherited a cow flying business, gave TED Talks on the proper ways to fly a cow, and the man I’m destined to be with now tells me that cows have been walking all along. 

No, honestly, fuck the universe. He didn’t goddamn believe in deserving people. 

He, with his bony fingers gently brushing over my cheeks, drawing patterns down from my temples to my chin, didn’t believe in deserving people. I would give him a tattoo gun and tell him to ink them into my skin. I would give him clay and tell him to mold them onto my face. I would give him my soul and tell him to bleed every pattern that he could think of into it. 

“I don’t deserve you,” I repeat the mantra, rolling it off my tongue. I have enough of it stored away to let it slip out so easily; I have a warehouse filled with boxes of it. I have my bone marrow programmed to produce blood cells with the mantra ingrained into them. I have enough, so I ought to give him some of it. 

“I don’t believe in deserving people,” he lets the pattern travel to my throat, and I imagine the ink twirling down from my temple to my neck; I imagine how the needle from the tattoo gun would tickle the sensitive skin. 

He’s looking up at me with his sunken brown eyes from where his chin is resting over my heart, his breath ghosting over my chest. The angle is awkward, uncomfortably close, his face a bit blurry, but I would give him my heart and tell him to carve his initials into it. 

“I think people are merely people, and we are entitled to nothing and deserve no good and no bad because good and bad happens to all of us, regardless,” he whispers and taps his fingers on my sternum. I would give him drumsticks and tell him to drum any beat he can think of into my bones, “And people certainly don’t deserve people.” 

“Then how do we know who we should love?” I touch his back, trace the bumps on it, feel every ray of sunshine his skin has ever absorbed seeping into my palm. “How do we know who we should be loved by?” I would give him my hands and tell him to burn his warmth into them. 

“We can only love,” he turns his gaze away, pillows his cheek on my breast, his stubble scratching at me, touches his lips to my bare skin. I would give him a lipstick blood red and tell him to paint my skin with the shape of his lips. “We can only love, and hope to be loved back.”

And so, he didn’t believe in deserving people, and I had spent a lifetime watching cows fly. 

I lean down, bury my nose in his hair, breathe in every droplet of rain that has ever fallen on his head. 

I would give him my genes and tell him to rewrite the mantra I have spent a lifetime learning out of my DNA. 

I would love him and hope to be loved back.