Love, or Something Like It

Someone - no, not someone, that someone, him, the one I’ll never really understand and I’ll definitely never forget - he once asked me what love is. I couldn’t answer him then, mostly because I never really knew but I think I have a pretty good answer now. I can almost imagine how that conversation would go if it was to happen now. It wouldn’t be pleasant  but then hearing the truth rarely is, is it?

“Love is like me. Love is fickle, impatient and demanding. Ungrateful and petulant. Love is vain. Conceited. Arrogant.Wholly joyous and utterly melancholic. Love is selfish. Far more than you could begin to imagine, and yet love gives more of itself than you could believe. Love is graceful, clumsy, beautiful but uglier than sin. Love makes everything worthwhile, and you waste yourself while giving it everything it asks for. Love gets its claws into you and doesn’t let go until you’re desperate and dying. Love enjoys teasing you, making promises it intends to, but will never, keep. Love makes you wait and watches while you wither with a smile on it’s face. Love loves making you feel guilty for the crimes it commits against you. Love is fleeting. It will make your dreams come true and then up and disappear when you think you’re in paradise. Love is a bitch, a vile, sadistic bitch. And you will fall hard, and all the while love will taunt and twist you into something you cannot recognise. That, my dear, is what love is.”

“Is that what you really think? Is that what you’ll do to me?”

“Haven’t I already?”

“I think so.”

“I did love you once, you know, differently. Before love became just another way to get I want.”

 

How To Write a Fairy Tale (& Lose Faith in Happily Ever After)

i

Imagine the kind of life you’ve always wanted
Fill it with good things
Like
Smiles and laughter and intertwining fingers

ii

Write it down in cursive with your favourite pen in your favourite journal
Hide it away in the one place no one will ever find it
Tell yourself it’s not for you, best to forget
You’re more of the happily-never-after type anyway

iii

Kiss a lot of very ugly frogs
Never think about Prince Charming
Though you’re quite sure you might have met him
Once Upon a Time

iv

Kiss another frog and find a Prince Charming
Remember that fairy tale you wrote way back when 
Live it, love it
Until

v

Prince Charming turns out to be a good looking frog
Who’s just as slimy as the ones that came before
This is the part where the clock strikes midnight and you
Run

vi

Leaving nothing but a broken heart behind 

The First, And The Last

She fell in love for the first time. Completely, hopelessly in love. She fell for words that charmed and promised and fueled hopes she never knew she'd had. For a smile that made her feel the keeper of undisclosed secrets and half heard truths and half finished lies. For eyes that saw through her mask of pretty and bravado and still beheld her as beautiful. For that wide-eyed, lip-biting, barely-there-breath feeling she had heard of but never felt. She fell in love and lust and want and need. She broke her rules and played a game she'd witnessed but never understood. She felt, for the first time, she truly felt. She gave up and gave in. She fell for him; hard and fast and too-quick-to-think. She gave her heart away, without thought and without care. She said a breathless hello and goodbye arrived before she could breathe again. She tried to forget, but he'd taken over; mind and body and heart and soul. He was the first to make her feel this way, and she promised he would be the last.