The extremist kind of love

Fri, 10/03/2014 - 14:51 -- vxmarie

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If you’ve ever loved a boy who is both out of your league and culture

Whatever he meant by that

You would know what it’s like to sit at a dining table in a home

Where no one has to open their mouths or even speak the same language to hear their silence speaking

“She is not good for you, my son”

What it’s like to finally get up, walk away, eye waters held back until you’ve gone back to your own place and played in the puddle of your own tears in your own bathtub

Filled with pink bath bubbles and vodka

But mostly vodka

Impossibly trying to scrub off the dark pigments in your skin, thinking that perhaps along with your color, if you scratch it hard enough Mr. and Mrs. Lee’s rejection would also spiral down your drain

And take with it their assumption that your attending a community college is deemed unworthy to the words University of California San Diego embroidered on his new sweatshirt

 

If you’ve ever fallen in love with any kind of boy

or girl

or anything that had the ability to demolish you

You would know what it’s like to replay in your mind memories after memories

Until the only memory left is of his fingers intertwined with yours

What it’s like to lose a part of yourself you’ve always assumed you needed

What it’s like to condemn love, to deem it unworthy of your time

To convince yourself that love doesn’t actually exist

 

You would know what it’s like to pinpoint the flaws of your father

And make it your mission to make sure your mom’s footsteps aren’t the ones you’re going to follow.

You would know what it’s like to look into your grandmother’s eyes

As she sings how could you leave without regret

Am I that easy to forget

Dedicated to your grandfather whose hands have long since intertwined with another woman’s

 

If you’ve ever experienced years of silence from the first love of your life

You would know what it’s like to force yourself out of that love

To grow sick and tired of writing poems after poems

About Stupid. Love. Stupid broken hearted poems.

If you’ve ever been there

If you’ve ever given your all in the name of love only to fall in the cracks

Of bitterness and regret

Do not worry

 

Because you would also know what it’s like to finally crawl out of the comfortable blanket of darkness you’ve built for yourself, the joy that comes from realizing you were not born into this world to simply desire the attention of another human heart

And if you believe in a God,

You would realize that His love outweighs the curse he’s put upon Eve

When she and her husband took a bite of the forbidden fruit

I am no longer interested in this kind of “love” that harbors in hate for those who’s left

Nor am I interested in the kind of “love” that longs for a hand to hold out of loneliness

 

The kind of love I’m interested in is the one that exists between strangers

At a bus stop when a brother needs another quarter to get on

The one that exists between strangers

Walking in and out of the social science building, awkwardly holding the door for each other

Asking for nothing in return

The kind of love that teaches sociology students that everything is not always what it seems

That Love isn’t actually spelled with the letters l o v e

It’s spelled with the letters f o r g i v e

This kind of love goes beyond forgetting

It loves the ones who cannot love anymore

 

In a poem by Tolba Phanem, he describes an African tribe in which newborn babies are dedicated their own songs

That even after they’ve grown up and maybe have committed a heinous act against society

The people of the tribe will still gather around this criminal to sing his or her song

To remind them that their mistakes will never prevent them from coming back to his or her true identity

This is the kind of love I find myself being interested in

The kind of love that isn’t only willing to hold the hand of the person you love while they still love you

But the kind of love that continues to love even after you’ve lost

The kind that is kind enough to gather the courage to still pray for the soul of the person who’s acted the criminal to your unguarded heart

 

And most people will tell me how I dare promote justification for the murder of the soul of my mother

Or justification for the deaths of so many innocent lives by persons so often described as monsters

 

But how could I be afraid to publicize my inherited idea of unconditional loving, forgiving and cheek turning when my bestfriend once told me to always speak my mind even when my voice shakes,

When Martin Luther King Jr. had taught me to find value in being an extremist for love

Even if it means singing to the song of the person who’s persecuted you

When even Anne Frank, who in spite of everything, in spite of the mass murder of her people and her friends and her dreams of ever becoming a writer, she never gave up on believing that people are still really good at heart

 

But then again, maybe his mother was right, I am only nineteen

How should I know anything about love?

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