Sunday, May 03, 2020

Love

I wouldn’t have known
And nothing could’ve taught
Me what to call love
And what to not

I would’ve gone on
Miserable or mindless
Hysterical or hapless
Forever if you hadn’t, I guess,

Barged into my court
With a smile and a question
And made me and my poems
Your own without correction 

I like to think I was broken
Just as I know you were
But that’s just me
Romanticizing my hurt

I was blank, unwritten
Barely literate, barely smitten
I hadn’t experienced love
I hadn’t been bitten

Like I am now
Like an uncultured ape
Who found a princess
And his mouth agape

When you gave me your all,
Entrusted me with yourself
That’s when I grew
Up and I could tell

The difference between
My infatuations and love
That’s when I knew
I was a frog in a well

I had only ever fallen
 in love with myself
Only ever smelt
What I wanted to smell

And then be surprised
Hysterical, miserable
When it wouldn’t turn out
The way I foretell

And you, you put your everything
In a box and shipped it to me
You told me you were mine
Forever in heaven or hell

And I knew, 
I knew what I’d never
I knew love,
I knew being together

“You are mine as I am yours”
To feel it alone is nothing at all
But in the sharing of that belief
is what I know as love, that’s all