Because I love you.
Because I want to love you.
Because I want to love the idea of you.
Once upon a life,
I tried to love the man
that every girl should supposedly love.
And on his thousandth chance,
I no longer let the brusies
build up
and no longer allowed my eyes to turn red.
I swallowed the pride he had yet to steal from me,
and the worth I could gather
from the floor,
and said goodbye to the man that gave me
the breath I no longer wanted.
People asked why it took a thousand chances.
“Because I love him.”
And there was a time,
in the middle of a high school career I didn’t want to finish,
that a boy smiled at me 
one too many times.
And on the night I cried into his shoulder
and kissed him just to feel something,
I fell asleep thinking
he owned the heart I wasn’t sure was alive anymore.
It was not until I read the words
on a bright screen
that I felt this heart fall back to sleep.
People asked why I still think about him in the back of my mind.
“Because I want to love him.”
Then,
there was the night I sat stretched and alone 
in a school bus seat.
I saw his eyes and his smile,
and never thought he could ever fall for
a shadow in a corner of a bus.
And I floated on his words and trailed his stories,
I waited for the hammer to fall 
against me,
but he never let it. 
He heard my words and listened quietly,
he spoke little back
because he knew that I didn’t really want an answer,
I just wanted the reassurance of one.
People asked me why I missed him when he found his own answer.
“Because I wanted to love the idea of him.”
Love is a question I could never fully wrap my head around.
A ghost of a father,
a leech of a first love,
and a lost chance of a real one.
But love shouldn’t be about 
who they were or
where they kissed you on a timeline or
why they think you’re worth listening to. 
It’s about the way they fall in love
every time you come back around.
It’s about the times they stay and the times they answer,
even if you didn’t want one.
It’s about the worth they build a path for,
not the worth they build for you.
“Because I love you”
should have been
“Because I love giving chances.”
“Because I want to love you”
should have been
“Because I love feeling something.”
“Because I love the idea of you”
should have been
“Because I truly love you.”
It takes a lifetime to find a love
that can last a lifetime,
but you’ll do it, 
because you love them.