Love is what some may call a strange drug,
But this definition of love
Is not what I will be writing about
What if love is life itself,
Transient,
But like air filling our lungs,
Slowly, deliberately,
A spark of life caught within me

My mind isn't much good
When it comes to figuring life out,
I kept trying on different denominations
of Christianity
But that was like
Me being attracted to a certain type of man,
Though they all had their differences,
Their core was the same
I tried to force myself
To connect to the core,
But I just can't....
It's not for me,
Not for who I truly am

We think we know people, but we never really do
Yet we shouldn't feel lonely
Over this realization
Connection isn't hindered by a lack of merging
It's actually kind of fantastic,
To know
That what is considered to be you,
This person with this name,
this identity
With these memories and experiences
Can't be replicated,
That our essence
Is as brilliantly unique
As a snowflake or
Our fingerprints

I used to steal money for drugs
I was hungry for love
There was just too much I had gone through,
And not enough help available to me
I reached out my hands seeking help,
I did
But people,
People with their problems,
Their trivial lives,
Caught in the web
Of never enough
Always seeking more to
add to their plastic kingdom
People who write half-assed posts on Facebook
About changing the world
After they sustain some social tragedy,
But never really do
Help others,
ever

I realized this
When I was suffering,
Almost dying,
Some help,
I can't deny that
But most turn away
Eyes full of scorn
Shaming you for suffering in the first place

I don't know what to do about this world anymore,
Because I still find myself
Sobbing alone
Having emotions from my past,
Rise in me, suddenly
Like violent waves
Giving me no other option
But to ride them
And I think to myself,
As the remembered emotions
Settle down
And I can breathe again
"I lived through that,
And I'm still here."

Now,
though I've learned to touch beauty within myself,
Cultivate it like a garden,
Almost creating beauty out of thin air
I still yearn to touch beauty in the real world,
And I know there is plenty of beauty
Woven into the earth,
Like in the trees, and my bare feet on grass,
Butterflies and my crazy *** dog yanking my arm,
Always reminding me to keep moving forward
But I want to touch beauty in people again,
But people are so wounded
And I'm so wounded
And armored
and scared
To touch the core of love again
Because you touch it
And it enraptures you,
Until it doesn't
And you're left all alone again,
Sitting within the desolation of your mind
Silence drumming against all the doors of your mind
Like an unwelcome visitor.
There are too many lonely people.
I am one of them.

I can blame myself for my loneliness,
Say that I isolated myself,
That I had the propensity to
Because shame was a demon
that had possessed me almost entirely
But that's not completely true
I did put myself out there,
Knocking on doors like a vagrant,
Begging for just one person to let me in to
the interior of their heart
And hold my mangled heart too
But I found so many closed doors,
And when someone did open their door,
We would fall into the familiar dance
Of the family dynamics we were raised in
I always felt short-changed,
used, not seen or heard or loved
So I hid.
Isolation is living in an abandoned car
On the side of a road that no one every drives down
In the frigid winter

I want to write a happy ending to this poem,
But right now everything is bittersweet,
And so that's better than before
When isolation ruled my life
Yet my desire
for real, honest connection
Warms me
And is like a compass
Deep within me
Showing me in which direction I must go
To find again
The roaring fire of Love.
I long to be warmed by.