Love was a nine-year-old girl,
reciting Bible verses in Sunday school.
                          Love is patient, love is kind.
                          It does not envy. It does not boast.
                          It is not proud. It does not dishonor others.
                          It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered.
                          It does not keep a record of wrongs.
And love was that she was foolish enough to believe it.

Love was writing your name in the sand,
sitting on the shore and waiting for the tide to steal it away.
It was counting every painful minute before a sunset
and guessing how you spent them.
The postcards I wished were valentines
from all of our favorite cities.

Love was the brand of your lips on the skin of my wrists,
searing away the parts of me I thought I needed.
Every breath we shared was oxygen,
but someone left matches in my lungs.
In case you’re curious,
I still haven’t managed to put out
the fires you started.

Love was the unspoken words
planted neatly in the punctuated pauses
of the conversations we never had.
Petals of wildflowers I pressed between
chapters of your most treasured books.
The times I sang myself to sleep
to the crinkling of pages,
dog-earing the ones that reminded me of you.
The love letters pinned to the post-it notes
I traded for silence.

Love was placing a candle in the window,
and a white flag on the doorstep.
Leaving the door unlocked
not to let you in,
but to watch you walk away.
Doubling up on waterproof mascara
on the nights I spent thinking of you.
Time is priceless,
tears are not.

It isn’t fair to say you miss the sun,
until you’ve danced a turn in the rain.
No storm warning could have predicted
the way your lightning touch would
paralyze every delicate nerve in my body.
Is there a word to describe the way
thunder rattles the sky?
There should be.
I would have said it then,
when you told me you loved her,
and all I could do was search
for an umbrella.

Love was the flour stains on the clothes I borrowed,
the scent of vanilla lining the holes
I tore in your old sweaters,
the loose ends I wrapped around my fingers.
I started carrying needle and thread
to patch up the places where love wore us through.
Nothing seemed to stop us from unraveling.

Love explained why you caught me
lingering in hallways,
mapping exits signs like landmarks
after you told me to keep my options open.
It was the moments when I sat on the stairs alone,
puzzling over the memories I couldn’t jigsaw piece together.

Loving you ought to have made me better,
but promises notwithstanding,
you made me worse.
Because love is bitter.
She is neither patient, nor kind.
Love is ruthless and desperate.
Love is selfish, jealous,
and will delight in how pushing you away
made her feel stronger.
Love is too indignant to admit
how much she misses the sound
of your voice.
And though she claims she is proud,
love can hardly bear to face her reflection
when you are not around to tell her
she is beautiful.

Love is never satisfied.
Love tries to pretend that she is.

Believe me when I say
I wasn’t always like this.
Because once,
there was a nine-year-old girl
who used to recite Bible verses during Sunday school
and imagine what love would be like.