“Don't you miss being in love?”, she asks.
I simmer, gathering myself  and my thoughts.

No, I don't, because I have not been in love;
Not in the manner I imagine it.
I have loved - beautifully, might I add -
But never have I been in love.

How can I have?
At my best, all I knew was to compel, persuasively,
someone into loving me -
the best possible way I knew how.
I revealed just enough of myself,
the beautiful of myself,
the parts of me that drew butterflies.

Hidden were the broken parts of me,
those which keep me awake, sleepless -
'til the moon kisses me goodnight,
in the last hours before dawn.

I am not, by any means, denying ever loving.
I have loved, blindly and beautifully.
All I have ever been good at was loving -
loving someone into loving me,
the best way possible.

But, all of their love was inadequate.
A love which always fell short of loving me,
the best way possible.

Love; inadequate:
Unable to express loving me,
unable to express themselves of loving me.

In turn,
I was slapped with sloppy efforts of loving me -
Vague inadequacies of love.
It was never enough, not remotely close,
to what I had imaged loving me would be.
It was short of ever arousing me internally,
short of wits to spiral me into being in love.

And so, how can I miss being in love,
when it has always been a feeling that eluded me?
How can I miss being in love, when in love -
I concealed the broken parts of me?
How can I have been in love when I was lonely, in love?

How can I have been in love,
when all I knew of being in love was to love myself -
by loving whomever loved the aesthetic parts of me?

Loving me has always been an infatuation -
an infatuation of the broken pieces of me,
coming together to create an illusion of a love -
an unsatisfactory love for loving me.

How can I have ever been in love when no one has known,
expressed, conjured the best possible way of loving me.
All of me.

Once more, up at the last hours before dawn -
awaiting the moon to kiss me goodnight, I tell her.