Please Don't Talk about Love Like This

You really are not the person to talk about bitterness of love,
since you define love as a romantic thing, and your only
relevant experience is being loved or not loved by a few.
When you talk about bitterness, it’s the bitterness of a cake
topped with too much dark chocolate. You are the kind who drinks
pumpkin spice latte, wears knitted gloves, eats ice-cream in January
in a heated room. Love is a dessert that comes with dinner, but you always
whine about how unfair you didn’t get the flavor you wanted.
I’m not going to tell you what love is. You might not believe me
that love could be expired wine, half-eaten dragon fruit,
crisps soaked by dripping, unfinished soup. This is what you might
find at the back of decency. This is what will feed another person
in unbearable weather. You might not believe me that people could find
themselves smiling when their fingers are so numb in the freezing air
that they don’t feel the pain of skin cracking. They don’t even know
how to spell eczema. They grip their life with bleeding red hands.
They have itchy bodies, swollen toes, red eyes, foot fungus.
And love is another person who shares the symptoms.
There are rooms lived by the miserable and the under-educated.
There are beds slept by parents who moan when flipping over long-hurt spines.
Love is the free soap bundled with cheap detergent which is so bold
that all colors of their life get washed off. Love is also that faded yellow trouser
they didn’t throw away but washed again and over. Love is microwaved food
that is left from last dinner. They smile when they smell something
familiar again. Love is lousy. Love is bare. Love is an infested house.
That’s why I am asking you not to talk about love like this.
Please, leave it some space
- when it feels too humble to show its face.