love in poems
Love, the way it gets written about, not the cute kind, but the kind that shows up in old poems and in sad books where nobody is really okay. the kind where love is never just gentle. it’s always hunger, it’s always teeth, it’s always devotion.
and it’s not even about romance. I mean any kind of love that only a merciful person can give. the kind that knows you completely, and doesn’t get disgusted. the kind that sees what you are capable of and refuses to let you stay weak. the kind that stays close, even when you think don’t deserve it, the kind that looks at everything you’ve done and still says you can be better and will be better.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately, how poets always make love sound like something that hurts. like something that consumes you. like something you have to endure. like it’s not real unless it changes you in a way you can’t undo, and i used to read those things and roll my eyes a little, because i thought it was dramatic. i thought it was just art or i thought people wrote like that because pain makes prettier sentences.
but, maybe it’s not that, maybe it’s because love really does make people do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. maybe love isn’t always soft. maybe the kind of love that actually changes you has to be uncomfortable. maybe it has to take something from you. i don’t know. i don’t know if i believe that or if i’m just trying to make something sound less ugly by giving it nicer words.
I keep thinking about all those poems where the narrator is begging. not even for kindness. just begging to stay. begging not to be left. begging to be chosen. begging to be forgiven. and the love interest in the poem is always above them somehow, always calmer, always certain, always the one who decides what things mean. and the narrator is always the one who gets taught. the one who gets corrected. the one who gets shaped. and it’s written like that’s romantic, it’s written like the suffering is proof that it’s real, it’s written like the pain is a kind of devotion.
I don’t think i understand love the way other people do, i never have. i thought love was supposed to feel safe, like warmth and closeness, like you could be messy and still be wanted. but when i was messy i got punished. when i was emotional i got called too much. when i was quiet i got ignored. sometimes i think i keep mistaking softness for love because i’m weak, because i want to be comforted more than i want to be corrected, but it's not helpful
when someone is firm with me, when someone is strict, when someone doesn’t let me spiral into the same patterns again, it feels comforting. it feels like being contained. like being held in place. like someone finally decided to take responsibility for me, because i clearly don’t do it well on my own
I don’t know if i even have the right instincts to tell the difference. i don’t know if i ever did. and i keep thinking about how poets write love like a cage, and then call it a sanctuary, love in poems is always described like surrender. like the highest form of love is letting yourself be undone. letting yourself be remade. love is not something that meets you where you are, but something that drags you somewhere else, maybe i’ve been spoiled by the internet and by comfort and by the idea that love is supposed to feel good all the time. maybe love is supposed to demand something from you.
i don’t know really, i don’t know if i believe that, but i keep thinking it.
I keep thinking about how people always say “if they loved you, they wouldn’t hurt you.” and then i think about all the things people do to each other in the name of love. i think about parents. i think about religion. i think about discipline. i think about correction. i think about the way people justify everything if they can call it care.
and I think about how i’ve hurt myself for years and called it coping. and how i’ve punished myself and called it honesty. and how i’ve destroyed things and called it freedom. so who am i to say what love looks like, when i don’t even know what care looks like?
sometimes i think i’m stuck in a cycle where love always comes with pain. either i do it to myself, or someone else does it “for me,” and i’m supposed to be grateful that it’s not coming from my own hands anymore
and that’s a sick thought to write down, but it’s true, to me, and maybe that’s why the poems feel so familiar.
I’m trying to see myself the way i’m seen, because my own view is unreliable, and i need to accept love when it comes as guidance, not just when it comes as softness.