Love

Love:
The word gets thrown around so much that it has
Picked up a few bruises
Lost it's beauty, it's fire
Our love... My love
The "love" of a foolish youths
Awkwardly flashing their status as a pair with their
Fingers
Interlaced
Between
Hands
As they walk amongst witnesses to a spectacle
Proudly proclaiming statuses for one another on Facebook profiles
As though love was some trophy for a game in which we all compete
That a lover is something we "have"
A statement which carries weight with peers.
Something displayed on the shelf next to your youth soccor medallions
An A+ essay on the fridge

Yeah, this was my love.
Something done to fulfill some sort of social need
That women can't just be people for me
They must be measured and weighed
Studied and compared
Like some sort of commodity or luxury
To be set on the glass table at home and admired
Alien ideals: "What do I look for in a girl?"

What ever happened to people loving people?
Loving them because their hearts were improvising songs
And couldn't stand to lose the beat of the other?
Why are relationships expected,
Distributed amongst a population?
A "one in three and you should be the one for me" thing?
When did we begin to quantify love instead of qualify it?
When did it become a drop-down box
On a crowded page of irrelevant information "About Me?"

I think I get it.
I've been the fool.
And somehow, I knew
Knew enough to write this.
I was not ready for love
If it was something I should have instead of something I needed
An expectation instead of a desire
A commodity to be hunted instead of a wonder to be discovered
So when the word rolled off my tongue,
it was just as deformed as my visions of it.
And my heart knew it.

Fuck society's "love."
Fuck all your "That's great for you two!" and "Oh! Where are you taking her?"
Because quite frankly, my dears,
Love is selfish.
Love means that you don't give a damn what anyone else thinks
That this person means so much to you,
You'll brave the ire of any hardship for them
The fact that "she is my girlfriend"
Shouldn't mean a thing to anyone
But her and you.
It's your love, and no one else's
And while you may feel the need to tell somebody, tell anybody
Tell everybody
Don't wear love on your sleeve like some gaudy adornment
Because if it is love, you don't need to tell it
It shows itself.
Because if it is love, you don't need to confirm it,
You've already agreed.
Because if it is love, you don't need to share it
The one who needs to know already does.

Wasted a Whole Day

The sickly sweetest taste
Of your lips pressed to mine
Sent wave upon wave of hormones
Flowing through our blood lines.
On that night of swaying
With hips positioned on hips
We had made a secret pact
With our two pairs of lips

And on the journey back
Those promises were made anew
Somehow both of us were convinced
That we had found love true
So we stumbled into a relationship
And made each other whine
So intoxicating with our actions
You though they were divine.

But quietly my mind complained.
Said that I had wasted a whole day.
And the promises, once so sweet
On my soul, they began to weigh.

Back into the yard we flew
And pressed our signatures in
Each of our warm bodies
With the edges of our grins.
Our hands explored places
They had never been before
And contortions seized our bodies
Each time, we pushed for more.

But day after day, unrelenting
The hidden affirmations made
In warm, but lonely places
Yes, on my soul they weighed.

So finally my voice proclaimed
That we had wasted a whole day
With our quiet confirmations of lust
We quickly pushed love away.
Leaving a shadow of its meaning
Behind formless words at play
Yes, while our bodies twisted
We quickly pushed love away.