I Don’t Want To Say This Is Love

I remember my mom telling me as a child that love can get you through anything.

I wonder if that’s why she stayed with my dad even with the lies, and the rumors, and the finding of his email address on a hacked website everyone now knows about.

I wonder if that’s why my best friend laid black and blue several times in a hospital bed at the hands of someone she thought she could trust.

I always thought that maybe this is why I don’t allow myself to fall in love with someone.

Why I’m attracted to summers, weekends, and even goddamn nights with boys that I know wont lead to anything serious.

Why I always force myself to leave before the morning, so his beautiful eyes aren’t the first tings I see, so they cant lure me in and make me stay.

I choose people who are unlovable because someone you don’t truly love can never truly hurt you.

Because love makes me think of empty tequila bottles and my college classmate pass out next to one unable to understand why her person left.

It makes me think of that lady in the park who goes to the same spot her heart was shattered 20 years before in the hopes that the boy will eventually come back.

Maybe this is why you said I was always so closed off from you, why you said I never let you inside.

I’m scared that if I open up, I’d be forced to feel all the things that I know I could feel for you.

Because if you were the sun, I’d be burned by how often I’d want to bask in your heat. If you were water, I’d be the valley in drought desperate for just some of your drops.

And I don’t want to say this is love, but I just want you to know that you make me feel a combination of confusion, anxiousness, and excitement all at once.

You make me feel like spinning and turning and leaping and doing anything I can to get your attention.

And I don’t want to say that I love you, but my mom might’ve been right. Because I feel like you can get me through anything.