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