When I was a child I learned love made the world go round.
See my very creation became of the love two people had for each other.
Brought so close the heavens gifted their union by opening up the clouds and bringing forth new life.
I learned that love looked like spending days avoiding each other and sleeping with backs facing one another.
When I turned ten I learned that love sounded like screaming matches and broken plates.
Love looked like quiet dinners and long nights eavesdropping on hushed arguments.
At twelve love turned into separate houses and living in duffle bags and two Christmas’s.
I first fell in love at fifteen.
I was sure it was love, but bright eyes don’t see lies kept locked away in closets.
My next taught me love was deadbeat dads and dial tones and dust clouds.
Love turned into fume filled lungs and hanging on to his split ends.
Grace came for me and granted kind love, shared between the wrong people. It didn't resemble any love I had ever known. I let it drift away for cash transactions, my soul for a junkie’s.
My type of love was dime bags and self-medication and blackouts. Overdosing on oblivion. It was being thrown against walls and hauled over shoulders and pinned to the ground and it was the look of hate when he said my name.
I thought maybe that kind love could still be there, paused in time waiting for me to return, but then love became a tug of war, one step forward, two steps back.
The next one reminded me that love was right place, wrong time.
In my hour of need, love was a trade, flesh for room and board.
I learned to build walls out of my rib cage, until that heart could love the sound of its own beating.
But when I kissed his mouth, he asked me to swallow my tongue so I did. Overwhelmed my own voice and the words went down like broken needles. My vocal chords started to rot and a film formed over my mouth. He broke it to shove his fist down my throat, ripped out every promise he stitched to my heart. When he said he loved me he forgot to patch me back up.
I learned again and again, love is hurt, is pain, is a knife to the chest along with one in the back.
Love is carrying the weight on someone else’s shoulders so they can turn around and forget I’m their spine, holding their head up high. Too high to see the one they tower over.
Love is unspoken rules of engagement, and unspoken punishment for breaking them.
It’s chills and panic, skin turned gooseflesh at his touch.
Love is cruel and love is stale like the milk in your coffee left to curdle and love is curling up on the kitchen floor.
Love has been taught and the lesson never changes.
titsay
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
