a laurel plant

When he explains how he cannot love you, that he will never be yours alone, when he tells how the meek and the gluttons, the tempted, the proud are his angels - do not mourn. Smile. Feed him. Wash his hair. He is a king among thieves. The leeches will hollow his skin, the crows, reduce him to bones. His own heart will empty him. Allow for the bleed. Be ready with tourniquet and prayer. In the dry burn of dawn, after the last of the lashes, the thors and the spittle, when his limp body is laid at your feet, remember the night he loved you. The ember of his eyes and the way the words came like honey. You were made for this.

The Chippewa have a word for it – it means ‘the sickness of long thinking’. You cannot tame a wild animal, because it will always remember where it is from, and yearn to go back.