?

I got a Valentine's Day in the post

a letter from the one I loved the most

but the words of love that this day has planned

were replaced with symbols. I couldn't understand

and the card fell from my hands to the floor

because I don't know what love is anymore.

I don't know what love feels like anymore. In the name of love I've been intimidated and confined, I've cried and begged, and all in the name of love gave it all because I thought this was it. That I wouldn't need it anymore, because someone loved me. Meanwhile, my mother and I argue on the phone and when we hang up she must love me a little less. Meanwhile, a neighbour is falling in love with me in a very strange display of actions and words. And the one I loved somehow as time elapsed spoke to me things that distorted love. The comfort of it was twisted out of shape, the dislocation of all its  component parts that I went out of my way to find again were scattered.


Sockets and bones and brain unhinged
just too short a distance away to unlock by
music box mouth, tip jar mouth,
ashtray mouth, spilled milk mouth.