When I was a girl, my father told me not to say I love you all the time. He said love is not really love when it is worn smooth with use; love is only love when it cuts your mouth and makes it bleed. Love is only love when it's still so new it carries the scent of disuse and gathers dust where it rests collected between the juts of your teeth and the the ruts of your molars.
But what does he know about love?
My father was a razorblade of a man who never knew a patch of flesh he did not serrate. His kisses left blood on my cheeks where only youthful softness should be, and when I grew up I kissed copper-flavored boys who bled onto me. (After all, love is only love when it tastes like gunmetal and grief.)
But here is what I know about love, a lesson learned deep in the trenches of divine femininity and unholy rage:
Love is still love when it is tattered and smooth ; Love is still love when it is a gift, hesitantly given and cautiously received ; Love is still love when it is worn to the bone between decades of use, indistinguishable footprints on a narrow bridge between souls ; Love is still love when it is a seedling in my palm and the width of an oak tree between yours ; Love is still love when it is bite-sized and palatable, whoosh, goes the airplane down your throat when the enormity of it is too big to swallow ; Love is still love when it begins with me and ends with me, a message in a bottle that will never reach your shores ; Love is still love when it begins with us and ends with us, a siren's song to call each other home ; Love is still love when it is the hollow gap underneath a wooden floorboard and the broken, bitten nails on your hand ; Love is still love when it is distended and full, a belly stuffed to bursting with yearning affection ; Love is still love when it is finger-painted into flesh and carved into bone because it all leaves a mark you cannot erase;
Love is still love when it is love, you see, because all of it reflects the heart from which it was conceived.
My father was a razorblade of a man; perhaps, I am his knife-edge daughter. Perhaps I too leave crimson where only pigments and complexions should be. God knows there's blood on my hands, most of it my own, for I can still feel the echo of my heartbeat in my palms, though it's all but turned to stone. But if such a thing is true, then perhaps the following is as well: that love is still love when it is the detonation inside my chest and the war inside my head, because loveâtattered, reckless, hopeless, helpless loveâis still love, even in all its gory imperfections.
Insomnia pt. I (23:52) // j.
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