Love

 I spent my whole life looking for Love 

No, not just looking

Fighting for it

Love, as a human need, was never offered to me

Like you'd make sure a child has food, an education, or doctor appointments 

Love was never something that I could count on having 

I learned that I had to earn Love

Chase it

Be good enough not to scare it away

Because if anyone saw me, entirely, Love would surely run the other way

I begged for the Love of my mother

And she traded all the love I gave to her for absence and indifference 

So I moved on, chasing Love in hearts that did not speak my language 

They offered me long nights and a lake of tears

And I chose to watercolor it romance-pink 

The first man I've ever loved made me feel like Love was an impossibility for me

The one I will forever love abandoned me in the middle of the night, and now exists in the bittersweet nether of memory, almost like a dream that I hold on to a bit too tight - that tiny little evidence that Love doesn't need to be earned, but watered, fed, until it blossoms. 

The one who never says "I love you" holds me tight for a night, and but my Love is loud and cannot withstand the silence, because Love could never grow in the dark, because every silence falls like a love-me-not. 

I turned to the solace of friendship, believing that Love would be found in the family we can choose, and with that I have learned that my devotion is a burden.

I have tried to connect. To distill this immense feeling in my heart into so many lives. Even then, Love is nowhere to be found. 

I have never felt alone the way I do now.

I have never felt so resentful the way I do now.

I have never felt so absolutely desperate, empty, and sure of it. 

Because Love does exist, and I need it - it just isn't here for me. 

I have food, a home, a career, a whole universe inside of me

So I will barrel on leaving with the absence and the bracing clarity that comes with pain that Love isn't here.

(But then again, who would be?)