How could you love someone who bites? (i can love a love that bites)

You're knocking a bit roughly tonight. It's so heavy that I can see the cracks on the door.

I can also hear your nails scratching against the surface. Yet I don't feel any fear. Instead, this tiny, lovely-dovey feeling is what I feel inside me.

To some, this nocturnal visit of yours is a bloody disturbance to them—perhaps, a contradicting love they would never, ever understand.

But the people who throw their frowned faces at us are unable to comprehend how something with teeth meant to pierce could also possess an aura capable of such compassion.

They see the peculiarity before the affection, the hunger before the devotion, and the winter before the warmth—but it does not matter to me how you dress death in front of me. What I see now is that—

You showed up.

I laughed, flattered.

This set-up might be unusual to others because you prefer seeing me in the dark, or when the clock strikes midnight. Well, I don't really care because there's just you and me in the middle of silence while our hearts are pounding so loudly.

This unfamiliarity and oddly-shaped love is a home to me.

—because how could you despise the very things that make your lover who they are?

Your big figure envelopes mine. There is a breeze added to the cold body you bring, but it is more alive than the living me could ever have. You carry the night in your veins and my tender prayers in your eyes—as if the curse they ever blamed on you is just another beautiful danger I’m willing to take.

I am still amused by how you keep that very mysterious and pale look of yours, although every time your eyes land on mine, your face becomes brighter than ever as if a color palette had splashed across it, and a smile always escapes your crimson lips.

A smile you've been so scared to show to others. But then again, you're willing to shed your strong facade the moment our bare skin touches each other and the intense heat crawls into the chamber of our systems.

I tasted irony.

But I don't grasp any parallels.

All I can see is us in this universe with no buts and perhaps. It's just the soft spot that bites me right through.

You have never made me feel like we're different, new, or even unfamiliar.

The willingness I can swallow every time your fangs press into me—I feel less like being devoured and more like being worshipped. You are a lover in disguise who learned to yearn every second of the thousands of sunsets you could outlive.

You whispered, and its echo traveled.

Bats and butterflies flew in the wilderness of our emotions.

My neck rested in your palm, and I'd let you strangle my entirety.

I don't really care if you have me in a chokehold in your tenfold dimension. It doesn't bother me whether I have to translate my day into a different language. A sprinkle of salt and a clove of garlic a day won't keep the lover girl in me away.

All I know is that this is the most secure, assured version of me. And perhaps there is no really such thing as a cruel summer of loving someone like you.

And those who never enjoy this cup of tea, or bloodbath of ours—they do not have to understand. I’ll let them rest in the strange, haze, or foolishness.

After all, what is love if not the willingness to see beyond what frightens us and find something worth staying for?

This is not to fantasize Edward Cullen in his twilight or make a revamp out of Bella Swan's saga, but this is my own craft of love, rooted from blood—blood, and blood again with a bit of sweat and no tears.

Because,

I do not care if loving you means infinite dying and timeless waiting. As long as my soul caresses yours, I'd always choose to fall in love with you in every season and in all the years to come.

Article: Juliene Chloe Pereña

Illustration: ALLAINE CHESCA ARCAYA