It's ironic how I write about love
when the only love I have experienced
was when I was a young girl
and some of my parent's furniture was older
than myself

I don't know if I am allowed to call it love
because at the time I wasn't so obsessed
with thinking about his smile and the palette of colours
within his eyes
instead I focused only on perfect plastic dolls
and disguising the crumbs that fell
onto my dress when I stole from the cookie jar

It was a love so selfish that when he kissed another girl's cheek
I turned scarlet with anger
and sabotaged the sculptures she had created
out of blue and green plastic blocks

but before the sculpture even hit the carpeted floor
I was already over the so-called heartbreak,
with my eye on another little boy
who laughed at what I had just accomplished.

Nobody has ever been infatuated by me since that day
and my love has never been anything but unrequited
and unwanted
and frustrating
and yet I continue to fabricate feelings of love out of thin air,
writing them down on crumpled sheets of paper
and imagining what it would feel like
if any of the things I wrote about
ever came
true.