Portland, Oregon
21
If my love were an ocean,
there would be no more land.
If my love were a desert,
you would see only sand.
If my love were a star-
late at night, only light.
And if my love could grow wings,
I’d be soaring in flight.
Boys cry.
Girls masturbate.
Boys can like pink and not be gay.
Girls can have short hair and not be a lesbian.
Boys can like ballet.
Girls can like video games.
Boys can be hot without a six pack.
Girls can be hot without a hairless body.
Boys can have hair down to their waists.
Girls can have stretch marks, curves and back fat.
Gender doesn’t determine what you can and cannot enjoy, what you can and cannot look like or what you can and cannot do.
Talking about love is healthy but understanding love is impossible
My love will never be the same as your love and my love for you will never be the same as my love for someone else
Love is inexplicably necessary and so inexplicably unique
I love it
Baby, just make sure you’re doing the drugs and the drugs aren’t doing you
Fall in love with a girl who writes;
she will turn the freckles on your skin
into metaphors about stars and the galaxy
and make you fall in love with them.Fall in love with a girl who writes;
she will turn your dull jokes into songs
that she’ll sing to you at 2am on a Tuesday
and make you fall in love with them.Fall in love with a girl who writes;
she will turn your sadness
into stories about love and loss
and make you fall in love with them.Fall in love with a girl who writes;
she will turn all of your flaws and mishaps
into beautiful words
and make you understand why she loves you.
…I have never understood the concept of infatuation. It has always been my understanding that being ‘infatuated’ with someone means you think you are in love, but you’re actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling. But if being ‘in love’ is an abstract notion, and it’s not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else… well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation? They’re both human constructions. If you think you’re in love with someone and you feel like you’re in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is. Why do we feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?
But love is none of these things. It won’t suddenly make every day ok. It won’t change who you are. It won’t make your car go faster. It doesn’t even wash your dishes.
All love is, is love. And that’s all it needs to be, really.
We made love and then made love again and then after we had made love once more, quiet and dark and unspeaking and unthinking and then like a shower of meteors on a cold night, we went to sleep.
You don’t have to love your every flaw and imperfection. You don’t have to always love everything about yourself as long as you always love yourself.
It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
