I used to think love was a celestial event,
a comet that comes when you’ve mapped the heavens right,
after you’ve polished your best constellation smile,
stood beneath the stars you thought you deserved.
Love, I thought, was Sunday-best.
A version of me sipping coffee in soft light,
the best of my laugh tucked in my sleeve,
waiting for someone to read me like an open book.
But love is elusive as the moon’s dark side,
its phases a trickster,
never quite full when I need it most.
So I lace my skates and carve infinity into asphalt,
the sound of my wheels singing to a night that listens better than lovers ever have.
I turn pages in books that leave me breathless,
where characters love like galaxies colliding,
and I wonder if I’ll ever write a chapter like that.
Sometimes, I scan the sky,
hoping to catch the glow of love’s reflection,
but all I find is myself,
a hopeless romantic with hands inked in wanderlust
and a heart like a thrift store globe,
turning endlessly for someone who might never arrive.
I used to believe love waited until I was ready,
like a preacher at the altar,
but now I know love doesn’t keep appointments.
It’s messy, unpredictable—
like skating downhill too fast and not knowing how to stop.
So I keep searching, not for love, but for ways to cope:
to make the void my companion,
to find romance in moonlight and the way books smell when they’re old,
to laugh at my best jokes even when no one’s listening.
Because maybe love doesn’t come when I’m ready,
or when I’m fun,
or when I’m polished and perfect.
Maybe love finds me when I’m lost—
scraping my knees on pavement,
howling at the moon for answers,
reading the same story for the hundredth time,
falling for the universe instead of waiting for it to fall for me