Love is a red burst of passion, an orange sunset, a yellow dandelion in uncut grass. It's a green tile shower wall, chipping from the wet back pressed against it, and an ocean-blue drink swallowed to the last drop. A purple pansy; a pink carnation; a white lily. A brown bar of half-eaten, cried-into chocolate; a gray morning spent wondering where hope has gone. A black, irreversible death knell.
My parents sentenced me to a life of disappointment without a fair trial as they sat across the room from one another, their faces blank and dreary, unfazed by life and unexcited by love. Yet, I find myself flipping through pages of romance, musing on affection in journals smeared with black ink, writhing in the arms of faceless people I wish I cared about. I sigh like old floorboards in wait for love, for someone to repair those boards or rip them from under my feet. I know better from the times my siblings laughed; from when my friends gave me sugary, insincere reassurances; from when the love potion from a good, hard fuck grew stale with time and lies. I know so much better than to ignore what I've been taught.
But no amount of knowledge, no word from the wise or precaution from nature, has changed what I want.
YOU ARE READING
Aphrodite
Poetry"There's a blaze of light in every word, it doesn't matter which you heard: the holy or the broken, 'Hallelujah.'"- Leonard Cohen The poems in this series center on two characters: I, the speaker, and You, the speaker's subject. I is not a specific...
