love

I couldn't decide if this post should be called wanting to love love or trying to love love. Perhaps a bit of both. 

I am in a place where I have moments equal of repulsion and wistful feelings towards love. I shudder when I see or read someone's social media and talk talk talk about their husband. However, this is currently upstaged by longing for a good old fashioned highschool-esk make out session with a crush. Sigh. 

Somewhere in this, recently I am drawn to hearts. Big, over the top, neon, shout it from the roof top traditional hearts as the epitome of a symbol of love. I have not wanted a single heart anything probably since I was 10. I'm confused by this recent resurgence in my own heart, for hearts. I ask myself: are hearts the new polka dot?

I want to love love. I really do. And as I embrace these images and items I've decided my rational is that if I am surrounded by these tokens, and reminders, and strive towards the love that is what it should be. To me. 

In the meantime I love the retail therapy

And quite possibly the best visual solution ever to my love/hate/love feelings- a bag that allows me to embrace both- same time. I present the double sided heart tote: In red for the traditional optimist, and then reverse for the days that I live with my black, black, black, black heart.

barter

You have no idea how many times I bartered away everything to the powers that be so that I could have you. All my possessions. All my riches. My life. All my love. I asked time and time again, but my wager was never enough. I offered up my very soul, to which I was granted a small token- that I might only have a glimpse of you from time to time. It was more than I could have hoped for and yet something so difficult I could hardly bear. But I willingly settled upon that, so that I had something of you.

"If you look closely, you can actually pinpoint the exact moment her heart breaks in two" 

Bart Simpson 

Queen Victoria. Her comment on her attempted assignation 7 times, and one physical attack with weapon- in regards to the outpouring of loyalty after 

"(its) Worth being shot at- to see how much one is loved"

So all the cups got broke
Shards beneath our feet
But it wasn't my fault
And everyone's competing
For a love they won't receive
Cause what this palace wants is release

Lorde, Team

1

On a winter day when the windows in the school halls were coated in condensation and frost, the cheeky bad boy from my computer class, who flirted relentlessly with all the girls, did something no one else had ever thought to do. He dared me to kiss him. In that hallway. In a rare moment of laissez-faire confidence I leaned over, and did. 

2

I made you a sign with your name on it. I have also bought you a bouquet of my favorite flowers. When I finally see you scanning the crowd I weave toward you. When you see me, you drop your bag right there on the floor, inadvertently blocking others as they arrive. Just so that you can put your arms around me. The next day I wear freesias in my hair. 

3

You flirt with both the girls and the boys equally at every party we go to. So I am told I have nothing to worry about. 

4

We sit across from each other all night in a string of bars, pubs and restaurants. Weaving our way through that city. There are other people always with us. They float in and out but we are constant. And from the moment I met you I know you are mine. I have tunnel vision, and in my memory I only see your smile. Your eyes. When we are finally alone we don't know what to do, except to move and sit closer. I think you touched my hair. Brushing it off my face. When the night nearly closes we walk up the sidewalk ahead of the others. At the top of the street we pull each other around the corner to kiss. Away from everything. Just off the main road. 

5

I got a do over. Twice. I liked a boy and a boy liked me. I was young. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. It was the first time I confessed to my parents I thought I had a boyfriend. That first summer I was invited to the family cabin and I fantasized about after school specials and summer camp movies. It was all I had to go on. I could hardly muster holding his hand. I was terrified. A non existent nothing that made me petrified. After 3 long days his mom dropped me at home and while all our friends waited in the car I pecked him on the cheek. I thought I would die. 

5 years later a boy liked me and I liked a boy. We returned to the cabin, this time to chaperone his little sister and her friends. They were strange little women and I still felt like a girl. We were the focus of their attention. In the dark of night I ran off the end of the dock jumping into the black water causing them to pause in awe if only for that second. Then erupted, when he jumped off the dock splashing them all and swam to me. We held hands in the water. In the dark. Floating. After they all went to bed we took the canoe out and laid in the bottom talking. With only the moon. 

It was 5 years later. I live in a bright flashy city where there are no cabins or lakes. He kisses me under a street light, not unlike a moon. 

6

There are hundreds of us. Like a sea, it rolls. People floating and drifting. In waves, faces bob in and out of view. These waters part and I see you. Like a beacon. And I'm not the only one. Others are drawn to you. The current pulls them. But like swimming against a rip tide, you are the destination- but I don't know if I'll get there. When we officially meet a few days later, standing on a sunny street, I feel you might rescue me from my turbulent stormy waters. 

7

After 6 long months the boy I love comes late to my going away party and as he leaves, finally kisses me. Sometimes I think I might have dreamt it. But in my head I see his face. His orange beard. We stand in a driveway of a house I don't know and could never find again, and I will him to ask me to stay. 

8

You write me short stories. In a tiny spiral note book and then send them, one by one to me in the mail. The act of doing so makes me love you even more. 

9

We have a habit of running into each other at weddings. I don't attend many but its happened a few times. Once we sat at the kids table drinking cocktails, flanked by younger siblings. Then at another, we wound up together at the after party in someone's hotel room. I don't know why we ever left, but we found ourselves out in the hallway together. Buzzed off the late night and the fan fare. The love. Perhaps the love we had. And left. I realize now that you and I have never graced a wedding dance floor, but that night we slow danced outside the door to the room. You held my hand to your chest and sang softly in my ear. 

10

I sit at a party, holding my drink and feel your hand on my back. We are not together. In fact, you might belong to someone else. 

11

The night I fought with my parents and cried while on the phone with you. It was late and I studied for a test that didn't matter, no matter how hard I tried. I thought I dreamt you calling my name, through my open bedroom window. Only open because it was so late in the school year. No. I heard you. When I opened my blind you were standing in my front yard, under the weeping willow and bathed in the street light. You. You, who had never been to my house walked there in the dark, past midnight, on a school night. When I whispered the question of why, you answered that you came to see if I was ok. You saved me. If only for that one moment. 

12

You walked into the bookstore and calmly roamed the isles, picking up a book now and then, checking them out. You seemed like a man on a mission, albeit not the one I expected. I might not have noticed you at all except that you were at one point the only other person in the store. When I asked you if I could help you find anything you answered, I'm here looking for you 

And you actually were. 

13

The third thing that broke was my heart 

(the most beautiful and sad (and true) thing D.R. ever said to me)

14

I think about the boy who, like in a movie, I stared at across the aisle at my cashier job. Selling and packing groceries. He on my luckiest of days, working the till across from me. We did not speak. But he smiled at me. He was the reason I went to work- besides the fact that I needed the money to go back to school. We did not often get the same breaks, but sometimes at the end of a shift we'd push buggies in the parking lot together. In those grey hot thunderstormy nights. I was embarrassed to tell him I wasn't yet old enough to drink when he finally said a bunch if them were going to the bar after work. Then as luck would have it I was at the fair one night, late in the summer with some friends. I ran into him. We used our tickets to all go on a ride together. Pressed up against the wall of the ride it started to spin. As the momentum grew the pressure forced us back. The spinning made us laugh. I remember him smiling at me. We were both laughing. He reached out and grabbed my hand. Fingers interlocked we spun in the dark. Lights and music blared. We were clung to the wall. Our hands clung to each other. When the ride was over we went separate ways. When the summer was over we went separate ways. I remember the song that played that moment when we crossed paths and something spun out of our control.