The Dirt-Based Answer to Such Heart-Quandaries as, What is Love? So This is Love? and Do You Love Me?

Love is fleeting.

Love is shallow.

Love is fake.

Love is dangerous.

Love is exhausting.

Love is a flame, easily extinguished.

Love is a liar.

Love is a slippery, slimy-scaled sprat.

Love is petting a purring cat,

and then being scratched and bit.

Love is being asked for my number,

and then never being called.

Love is spending the day together,

and then never getting a word in.

Love is being best-friends single,

and then being deserted for him or her.

Love is ironic.

Love is opening oneself to be drained.

Love is keeping one’s mouth shut.

Love is sparing another and going it alone.

Love is black-and-blue marks.

Love is an open wound.

Love hurts.

Love tears.

Love bends.

Love stabs.

Love distorts.

Love calls out into the night.

Love cries in silent agony.

Love bleeds from a clot-less vein.

Love is this void that cannot be filled.

Love is thinking I’m blessing,

when it’s received as seducing.

Love is thinking this is life,

when all it breeds is death.

Love is pouring me out,

when I’m already dried up.

Love is advancing in confusion,

when it’s time to retreat.

Love is thinking I am healing,

when I’m trailing fractured hearts.

Love is always saying yes,

when I should have said no.

Love is always saying yes,

when all you give is silence.

              ***

God, I thought You were Love.

And that if I was in You,

and You were in me,

then I would be Love too.

But if this is Love . . .

Tell me I’m wrong;

I already know it is true.

But the dilemma remains:

I’m too earthen for You.