Cupid - The Arsonist

He does not carry love in his quiver;
only fire, only hunger, only the slow pull of a tide that drags you out too far.
A child, they say, a cherub,
but tell me, what kind of child laughs as the world burns?

His arrows do not pierce hearts;
they infect them, burrow deep, fester.
They do not spark love, they spark fever,
the kind that makes you forget yourself,
the kind that turns devotion into desperation,
turns longing into a wound you pick at until it scars, until it opens again, until you don’t remember what it was before it bled.

He does not whisper promises into the ears of lovers,
does not lace their fingers together like vines finding purchase.
He crashes them into each other like waves against jagged stone,
lets them believe it’s the ocean pulling them in,
lets them drown in the weight of a love they mistook for air.

He makes you think love is a battlefield,
that war is just another word for passion,
that suffering means you care.
And when the dust settles, when the bodies fall,
when the fire dies and all that's left is smoke and silence;
he does not stay to see the wreckage that's wrought.
He has already strung another bow.

Cupid does not bring love.
Cupid brings ruin.

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