Love

This is a darker tone than many of my other poems, but it's one that I'm proud of writing when I was in a place that I'm happy to say I'm out of now

Love

Sometimes I wonder if it even exists

Sure, the word is real but where is the emotion behind it?

How can you tell someone you love them when

Behind closed doors you spit out that same meaningless nothing

To another hopeless romantic who, because of you, no longer believes in romance?

How can you say love is in the air when I step outside and

All that fills my lungs is sadness?

That is not love.

Love should not cause a human being to lock themselves inside

Their homes like a caged animal

In fear of meeting the so called love once again.

That’s if you’re lucky, when you submerge yourself within

Material walls, someone can tear them down with other material things.

But what happens when you bury yourself deep inside your mind in fear of

Your own thoughts? Your own memories?

There is nothing on earth that can convince you to tear those walls down.

How can you expect me to believe you when you say you love me?

How can you expect me to giggle like a schoolgirl and melt into your hands

Like chocolate in the back of that damn cherry red mustang on that hot summer day

When you sat there and told me you loved me?

Because I have seen too many tears and I have heard too many cries.

I have sat on my couch too many times holding my best friend as she rocked

Back and forth to the beat of her own broken heart.

I have wasted too many countless nights on the phone with a girl that choked on her own

Regret for not providing herself to a boy that already forgot her name.

How do you expect me to keep my head up when the weight of so many broken promises made

To me, are holding it down?

Do you want me to act like I’m okay?

Act like all of those twisted memories filled with pointless kisses and crippling arguments

Don’t hold my mind prisoner?

You tell me that I can trust you, that you’ll never leave me

That you love me.

But my thoughts sew my mouth shut like stitches,

In fear of rejection in the form of unreciprocated emotion.

Because they are just words

And if the nights filled with heart wrenching sorrow

Have taught me anything,

It’s that my words are utterly useless.