Category: love

It’s really easy to write about love. It connects so deeply with all of us; it’s a feeling we understand and can never understand. It’s complicated and filled with uncertainties. And we’re so deeply set in our ways and our preferences and our passions that sometimes we miss out on the greatest of loves. Sometimes we forget to love our families, our friends, our selves. Sometimes we think we matter to someone. Sometimes we don’t matter one bit, and realize it too late. Sometimes we don’t know we’re in love. Sometimes we think we loved, when we never did; it just seemed like love at the time, and that’s how we remembered it. Sometimes we love someone like family. Sometimes we’re in denial that what we’re feeling is actually love. We wonder if they think of us. We wonder about them often, more than we should. We’re tricked by lust or obsession or envy and masking it as love. We’re telling someone we love them because it gets us something. We’re saying we love, when we know it’s not real. We’re loving based on one facet of a person, instead of the whole of them. We’re using love as an excuse to stay. We’re letting the one that got away, get away. We’re loving only when it’s convenient, or starting to admit we are. When they leave, we don’t actually miss them. We’re not letting new love in. We’re avoiding feeling. We’re lying to avoid love.

Which is why it’s so easy to write about. Simply because it’s so hard to explain, to experience in one way. We write and we question and we wonder—what kind of love has taken place? And how has that love changed me?

This poem is about one of those kinds of loves. The one that never happened:

Strangers

We’ve never met.
We have, but not really.

Sure, we’ve talked:

we’ve shared our fears,
our life stories,
our anxieties,
our goals,
our ambitions,
our hates,
our humor,
our history,

maybe even intertwined souls at some point,

but we’ve never met.

You don’t know me
because you’ve never asked.
It’s easier to maintain distance,
even when you’re so close,
I can feel your breath on my back,
your words in whispers down the nape of a neck
that never had to be mine.

We’ve never met,
and in never meeting, we could never fall in love.

You’ve made sure of that,
as have I,
and my past experiences have guaranteed
that this lack of meeting would never be one-sided,
my heart never misguided
because I never let you let me in.

We’ve never met.

And from what you’ve told me
I don’t know if we should ever meet.
I’d rather spend my life never knowing who you are,
than to fall in love with the idea of us,
of what we could be,

and yet,
sometimes I have to tell myself I’m being silly,
that meeting you is no more dangerous
than meeting a stranger
that you’ve bumped into in passing on the sidewalk.

“Excuse me.”
“No, excuse me.”

And you part ways, the exchange and the meeting lasting only a moment—

and you never see them again.

I was told very recently that I should not stop writing poetry, despite life’s tendency to make me procrastinate. But I haven’t procrastinated, not really. I started working at a job I really enjoy. Still doing Zumba (getting certified on Sunday!). And still making changes to myself I didn’t think were possible. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been, and I have my friends, my boyfriend, my employers (both current and previous not counting my internship), and my family to thank for it. So here’s a poem about young love, because love should always remain youthful—butterflies and all.

Young Love, A Poem

I fell in love for the first time,
when I was seven
because at seven
Disney princes
were easier to come by
than Followers and #hashtags,
walls you couldn’t climb
and photos unfiltered.

I used a typewriter then,
to finish science projects and school essays
taking paper to the back of paper,
to get rid of a mistake;
and
if all else failed
used White Out
before White Out
was cool.

I fell in love again
at ten
when young love kissed me on the forehead
without me knowing,
one year older
but not wiser
that one day
he would break my little heart
like cracking open a piñata
with a bat.

BAM!

And from there the candy flowed,
pieces of piñata heart fluttering—
playing with the air like twirling curls
around fingers

(much like I did at sixteen,
because I’d seen it in a movie once).

And if he saw me now,
another piñata heart later,
he’d see me whole again,
plastered together with little bits
of super glue
and glitter,

sun glinting differently with every
life turn or “I love you”
whispered in older ears,

against the faint jingle of mnemonic bells:
a dream a heart had wished it made,
a kiss to wake from sleeping,

the dragons finally slain.

It’s been a while since I’ve written much of anything. Too much has been going on. Or perhaps, not enough. Either way, here is my attempt to get back into the swing. The poem below originally started with the “Tell her” lines. I wrote the rest of this, on-the-spot, around them.

How to Break Up with a Girl, a poem

If you want to break up with your woman, lady-friend, lover,
I suggest you confess your intentions,
without mention of a lie.
Because once she sniffs it out, nose more canine than human,
lie-cocaine, lie-bacon,
lies that smell so delicious, she can’t help but sniff out more…

she’ll probably slap you
with some sort of comment
that involves a vulgar word
or two
or three.

She’ll hunt you
aggressively
until she feels her heart split open
like a crack in the earth;
you all earthquakes,
and her, tectonic.

Or you can:

Tell her you love her,
then go sleep with someone else.

Tell her you miss her,
then go sleep with someone else.

Or maybe just tell her the truth.
That you aren’t the kind of guy
who dates just one
or two
or three.

That you look for love
aggressively
in many women,
other women.

That your heart is a wandering dog.