a few months ago,
you asked me: "What is love?"
As you can see,
it had taken me a long time to understand the question myself,
but I think I've finally come up with an answer.
Unfortunately,
the English language
has only one word to describe something that has limitless interpretations.
In Greek,
there are three words for the three basic types of love.
Eros;
lust.
This type of love
is when you find yourself doodling their name
on the inside of your history textbook,
dotting the I's with hearts
as if you are 13 again and you were just asked on your first date.
You chose that textbook
because it will be the only place no one would ever think to look.
You think about everything you would be far too shy to say or act in person,
making out in the back of a movie theatre
not caring who would walk past,
sneaking off away from your friends just to have two measly moments of what you both call "peace."
Most often,
this type of love is encased in "I love you"
only to obtain a certain goal.
Virginty,
a picture,
or even just one more night
of having them in your arms.
Eros is not authentic,
it is emphemeral.
Phileo;
Brotherly Love.
The friend you would drop anything for in a heartbeat to make sure of their wellbeing,
but also the neighbor you see from time to time watering their garden.
They ask you
to tend to their garden while they are away,
and you do it
even though you've never spoken more than a paragraph to the man
because it is what you believe is right.
This type of love is the devotion of time and energy without any promise of compensation in return,
purely out of the good of heart.
Phileo lasts as long as the people do.
The final type of love
is Agape;
unconditional love.
In religion,
we are guided
or pushed
towards showing this type of love towards the diety.
Yet, very rarely
it is shown towards a human being.
Unconditional love
is the ability to say so much with only uttering a single word.
I have experienced this love,
it is great pain
and great sadness
but the feelings of pain will never leave my lips
in case they are transferred to the person i wish to have the least pain.
This kind of love
is when it is not only enough that you think about them every waking moment but every slumber-filled one as well. You have hung up your needs at the front door along with the key to your heart and devoted yourself entirely to them,
even if they don't reciprocate.
They have been adopted by your body and taken the form of a vital *****.
If you do not
pay absolute attention
to them at all times
you will run into many problems.
You need to keep them running smoothly in order to stay alive and healthy,
because without them you are nothing.
You are a sorry sack of bones with a beating heart with no purpose.
Unconditional love is taking all the lessons you have ever learned
all the rights and wrongs you have finally learned the difference between and throwing them out the window.
It is the thin line between sanity and insanity,
heaven and hell,
and safety and danger.
You walk the rope
from building to building
without the promise of a net.
Unconditional love
is authentic,
but not emphemeral.
((Love *****, don't do it.))

i remember of the artless days before i had met you and how whenever i went, i'd see a horizon star sewn;
how i could delve into utopian reveries and feel indulged, and how every kiss was a profound violet in bloom. (and how i was repulsed by boys who smoked--despise you for that)
then you came around. it was like every motion and resonance around me flatlined, all flesh faltered into corpses,
but in that virus abraded imagery, there was you:
a flaming grandeur of all that appeals.
you could have titled yourself a heavenly entity between a solely-all greyscale and i would have still believed--
i'd see your face in enthralling outlines before i went to sleep and whenever i spoke, your name gritted the back of my teeth, my bloodstream was fluxes with you written all over it.
went retrograde about it three times and it never passed. you named it cupid's love but i knew better. first blossom of spring and the archers drew their bows, i never saw you again.
i refused to go through the reversal phase; clung to the image of your lips, eyes, the color-enhancing visages that altered my retina, and decided that you were a better victimless ****** than any hit of codeine.
i never did go back.
i see stars but do not see chronology behind them, sleep but never rest, laugh but never with rapture, and anything even barely emphemeral feels like a century.
i'll always pray for heaven to let me back in: whether into culprits' hands or not.