Love.

It's such an easy word to scoff at.
We are born with our parents
nursing us on it.
With promises of never letting
that well run dry.
We live the rest of our lives
dedicated to finding that love in another person.
To discover that true, pure chemistry with someone.

As much as I hate to admit it
I want all of this and more.
I'm only human.
I just can't break out of this cage.
A cage built on a foundation of
ignorance, Jesus, loneliness, and hate.

That must be what a tiger feels like.
Living everyday enclosed by thick glass walls
watching everyone else live the life you want.
To be able to walk outside
with my fingers interlocked with the person I care about most
Without being stared at
Without being told it's unhealthy
Without having bibles thrown at us.

I'd ask my parents to make me free
But they'd just swallow the key
So I'd stay in there forever.
Because letting me breathe the outside air
would be conceding to what their upbringings told them.
It would be admitting that their baby boy is abnormal.

Somehow they didn't get me the memo
that I can't share my love the same way the normal people can.
That I'll never be able to feel the soft skin of my own child
or be able to hang a piece of paper on my wall
announcing my promise to keep my love forever.

You know, it's not like
I ever wanted to be in here.
I didn't choose to be trapped.
I didn't choose to have my life criticized and nitpicked.
I didn't choose to feel like a pariah.
If there was any choice involved
It certainly wouldn't be this.

I spend my life screaming
and pounding the glass
hoping people hear me but
really wanting to hit hard enough
to shatter some of the glass
and let the shards meet my skin
so I can feel something other than
guilt
shame
and embarrassment.

For now, I just stand hear
Wishing, hoping, needing
Someone to see me.
Someone to hear me.
Someone to find a key
And free me.

To be loved is to be seen,
and to be seen is to be studied—
noticed, dissected, explored,
investigated, pondered upon,
familiarized, nitpicked, even at times.
Bibliolepsy is a sign of depravity,
craving, longing and yearning—
and I yearn for you.

I trace your margins with trembling fingers,
annotate your silences,
highlight the pauses between your sighs,
memorize the italic curve of your thoughts.
Your footnotes haunt me.
Your ellipses ******.

You are earmarked in my memory,
creased in the corners of every chapter
I write alone at night.
Your spine, fragile with use,
still holds the weight of my need.

To read you once is to read you forever—
a manuscript inked in breath and glance,
revised by time, but never forgotten.
You are the first edition of desire,
untranslated, unabridged,
and wholly mine to interpret.