A crash course in love for those with little time and no experience:

 

Welcome

You may not be sure why you’re here

After all, ever since we’re young we’re taught love

In movie theaters and on playgrounds

Love is fed to us like drops of honey

We swallow happily

Romanticizing these invisible bonds we enter willingly

We are taught that love is everything

And I hate to shatter those glass childhood cases our predecessors spent so much time carefully placing our hearts in

But love isn’t everything

 

Love is not a science experiment

You do not watch it burn, waiting for some chemical reaction

Some feeling you know won’t come

 

Love is not a math equation

Forcing numbers to bend at your will in hopes that you’ll find what you're looking for

Do not look at your love and see a problem that needs solving

Do not let yourself be plugged into someone else’s unbalanced equations

 

Love is not an art project

Do not let him rake his clumsy, knife like fingers across your face

Paint bruises on your skin

Crumple you up and dip you into his ideas of what a woman should be

In defense that his presence on your surface has made you more beautiful than you were when you started

 

Love is not a history test

Your body an archeological dig, with relics for him to steal

A temple for him to walk in and out of whenever he pleases

Taking blessings and forgiveness from that shrine that is your soul

You don’t owe him that

You don’t owe him anything

 

Love is not an essay

You cannot wrap your words around a loaded gun and make it shoot flowers

He will wrap his hands around your throat

Trying to find his voice lodged somewhere between your flesh and bone

When he does

It will sound like

I’m sorry

I didn’t mean it

I love you

Poison

You will not always know it when you hear it

You will take those regurgitated words and swallow them gladly

Force smiles as they burn like acid in your stomach

 

Love does not burn in your stomach

Or force itself in when you say no

 

You may have been told that love equates to value

That the prerequisite for life is a goodnight kiss, a good morning text, a warm body to belong to

As though we are just broken pots waiting to be fixed and filled by some man-made cure

Love is not a cure

And you are so much more than some broken object waiting for a miracle

 

Love is not a miracle

It is beautiful, but not a miracle

The happy ending our human hearts can't help but hope for

Wait for

But not still and never silent

We’re equipped enough to live without it

 

Without him, your heart beats

You’re breathing

You have a name

And that's all you'll ever need

 

Class dismissed