Love Hurts

Love hurts in ways that are not physically present

Yet frighteningly tangible.

It’s like feeling the sun when it’s cloudy outside.

You can’t see it, but you can hold out your arms and you can tell

It’s there.

Even if you can’t see it,

It’s there.

Love hurts when you watch your father,

Covered in green with a mountain on his back,

Kiss your mother goodbye with a look in his eyes that says,

“It’s Panama.”

And your mother,

She knows him best and hears this warning that isn’t said at loud.

And once the front door closes, she sits down at the table slowly

Like she is made of glass,

But the children are watching so she becomes marble

And you eat real pasta for dinner instead of that shit that comes in a can.

Love hurts when your best friend is lying on the floor

Holding a cushion over her face because

“She is so beautiful.”

“She is so nice!”

“I am so…”

And she doesn’t finish the sentence

Because you’ve never opened up to each other in this way before.

Yes, she has pulled you out of your wardrobe when you’ve tried to hide

From your lungs and the way they constrict and betray you.

And you went with her on late adventures in the dark

So she could run away for a few hours from the figurative monster in her own closet.

So she could be in control for once, but not be alone.

You have loved each other through dark things that you both learned to cover

With well-timed humor and inside jokes.

But now there’s someone new who makes her smile so bright

Even you feel touched by the light of it.

And for once you’re both panicking over something beautiful

Instead of something that seems scarier than it really is.

Love hurts when you listen to your friend,

With her tight smile and bottles of pink wine,

Talk about a boy who only looks at her

Because she always lets him come crawling back to her bed

When he’s lonely and can’t reach anyone else.

Love hurts when she says she loves you and swears she’s listens to you

But you know your words fall on ears stopped with denial.

And she expects you to listen as she talks about how when he kisses her

It’s nice, but never how she hopes it could be.

Love hurts when your brother calls you drunk,

By himself,

At a karaoke bar because he’s lonely,

But he can only emote when he sings.

So you listen to him because you know he needs you to know

He wants more from life than Irish whiskey mixed with apple juice,

Which he only drinks to make him forget

What the United States Military nearly took from him

And what it did take.

Love hurts when you fear you aren’t giving enough of it

But you try to anyway.

You pour it out of yourself,

Like a watering can that doesn’t run out.

Love hurts when you stop breathing in the middle of the night

So you cough in the hallway so your roommate can sleep.

Love hurts when you offer everyone who comes to visit

“Coffee or tea?”

Every single time, even though you know they’re going to say

“No, thanks.”

It hurts to love,

To give it away freely.

It hurts because it’s trapped inside of you,

Begging to be free.

Love hurts when you use it, because it’s finally scratching its way out of you

And that release, once it’s over, is painless.