Love is a heaping plate of food,
but hunger returns, and with it, more meals to prepare.
Love is a parking meter,
keep putting in, keep putting more in.
Love is a robbery,
demanding to hold up, reconsider,
choose carefully your next words, and
hand it over if you know what’s good for you.
Love is a pirate ship plank to teeter over,
tread oh, so, precisely, there’s no safety net.
Love is an enigma,
origins stark but untraced.
Love is a compromise,
swirling selfish and self-serving to selfless.
Love is variable x number of cows for your daughter,
no, love is about much you’re willing to sacrifice.
Love is slow release firecrackers,
spark, spark, sparking.
Love is a hardboiled egg,
cracking open heads and cases, peering in,
let’s find out what’s inside that mind of yours.
Love is a stomach ache,
fearful, gripping, slippery, stuck.
Love is a chasm, falling, falling, falling, fall to fill.
Love is “a hamster wheel.”
Love is oily, stringy hairs, not yours, on the adjacent pillow.
Love is a fresh wound that never heals.
Love is unknown, incomplete,
repeated, over, over, over, under,
says so much, can’t say enough———
Love is not ends of the earth,
is not ocean or sea.
Love ain’t no river wide nor valley low,
is not rhymes and lyric.
Love is not mountains or horizons,
is not stars, studs and is not planets
Love is not “let it go and if it comes back to you, love it forever”———
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things———
Love is soggy bathroom towels, unwashed underwear, unpaid bills, free sex, morning breath, oil changes, making ends meet, taking out trash, spoiled cheese, what the heck do you mean there’s no milk, wilting flowers, cuddled on couches watching reruns, dirty dishes, boxed memorabilia, running errands, bodily functions, toenail clippings, I’m sorry, enduring in-laws, remember that time, that’s not what I said, toilet seats.
Love is apples,
Love is oranges,
Love is gone all pear-shaped, poppycock, and popcorn
with M&M’s.
Love is full of holes,
we are full of holes,
cooked spaghetti in sieves straining liquids and sound,
something which is never quite defined, fingers can’t pinpoint,
so interminably tangled, overlapping.
Some days fatter, longer, short, severed, soggy, forgotten, overcooked,
slurped up with delight, to take some now, leaving leftovers for later,
the good with the bad.
It’s difficult, in love, to tell the difference anyway.