Let's talk about love. Let's talk about young love, new love old love & blue love. Let's talk about butterflies and blueberry pies. Let's talk about practicality and obligation. Let's talk about pain and indignation. Call me mature to say love is pain and laugh when I turn my back but me of all people to ask may know just what pain love will bring upon a comfy cozy home of happy chubby children. Call me dramatic to say love is whiskey and love is vicodin. Love is repeating simple three word phrases no matter where the bruises lie or where you end up clutching your knees rocking back and forth so fast you cant breathe. That is love to me. I dont have the opportunity to see it any differently. Love prevails and love does not change love is an energy so incredibly persistent it will beat the word why so ferociously into you that you cry when the phone rings. Love is round two. Love is coming back to a motel with roaches and strange stains on the walls to smoke your strange strains just because you know the clerk’s name and you like the smile he flashes when you walk in. Now, let me tell you about those butterflies I mentioned earlier. They may be eating you from the inside out like rats or bumbling around like sweet little things blessing you with sweet little bliss,I felt these sweet little things in the pit of my stomach. I met a girl so sweet and she smelled like peaches. I knew I loved this girl in the peach pit of my stomach. I fell so deeply and madly in love with this girl but I lost her in the butterflies and I learned so much from it. she called me the apple of her eye. I was taught then how to fall in love with a head high. Apple stuck in my braces adderall stuffed in my pockets. I wooed her majesty with incredulous stories and songs of sunshine and moonlight. A raven-haired heiress of the night,she owned all that she set hand or foot upon, and I held that godly hand for hours, and I let her highness walk all over me until my skin was bruised and callousedQueen of my dreams and the taker of the devil's throne to those who gave me nightmaresand god how I loved her. how I held her and kissed her and how now nearly two years later god how I miss her. It's a lonely world despite or without her eloquent tongue down my throat. it's a ferocious remembrance of days where every morning was drowning staying awake was staying afloat. the Greek goddess of love is named Aphrodite. She comes with long blonde curls and eyes of the sea. she has such beauty that all who behold her are enchanted, enthralled and fall instantly in love. she has a body of ocean waves and a heart as heavy and beautiful as gold. my mother was named after the goddess of love. I beheld her weary eyes of the sea and degradation before me.  I loved her with every ounce of my heavy heart as she told me every time I did her wrong That she “loved me to death”. I devoted to her and her endless love and beautiful smile my every breath, despite her crooked English and my crooked teeth. I admired her and her strength as she admired me, me and my broken heart and confusing poetry, me and my weird friends and stupid things. She told me at least five thousand times “you’re not stupid you just do stupid things”. Maybe one year of slumber after you’ve broken my heart and spit in my face before leaving me. I will wake up, I will feel your poison potion slathered across me, I will weep into its web. I will rip my seething body from its shackles. I will drag my broken knees across the floor. I will hurdle this bruised body into the tub. I will rise like a nymph in hiding. I will forget the ravaging self loathing. I will get too comfortable in my skin. I will rip the lever too hot overestimating my abilities or anxieties. I will feel the brewing boiling cauldron water hit my matted hair and crooked back. I will grit my crooked teeth. I will let out a crooked shrilling shriek. I will mistake the scalding stream. For your love. For your oxycotin, your luke-warm heineken.  Your love, your screaming children, your life, your lighter, your stories, your lust, your pain, your drunken touch. I will wince. I will shrink, in my flailing and cryingI will hit the lever too cold and give you another reason to start screaming. The rush of adrenaline, the gasp grasping for anything, the second comingwashed me of my sins. My lies, my running from your interventions, my cries, my horrid mangled reflection. My stupid useless brain mistook the ice cold stream for your abandonment.The empty rooms, open windows, home intrudersthe dirty, dishes, dusty stoves, tangled sheets, the kissless cheeks, still red and bruised. The empty fridge and crying freaks. The bathtub mat was ripped out from under me.I remembered you smacking the back of my head and tucking me in asleep.I met the guy you told me you used to love. He stopped loving you a long time ago. It will leave you desolate to worship a deity that won't love you despite your sins. I used to pray for someone to save me. I used to weep into pillows and clasp my fingers together so tightlymy knuckles would bleed, begging for somebody anybody rip me from my mind and burn my body. I know now that running from love will do me no good,running from love will keep hellish hands around my throat for good.I know now that you won't be worried when I'm too skinny, I've learned to stopwishing for well wishes and start numbing myself to my apple core until my veinsand luscious lips turn bluish. I know now that loving someone unreachable is too tedious and torturous to accomplish. I love blindly and endlessly so please, for the love of god don't fall in love with me. I will wreak havoc upon any smalltown psyche. I will devastate any romantic who dares to meet my gaze and dance with fate. I will become to thine, a fix that which no other lover can fill. I will become to thine, a magnificent deity, oozing femininity and divinity, arch, twirl, catch the light just right, exhale ecstasyand show you what it's like to feel real. I may desert you as it was done to me, exposed to the elements, left for dead, ready to be infected with whatever by any other predator. That is love to me. I've no Saratoga to turn the war. I've no opportunity to see it any differently.