lover to not be loved

When my chemicals that keep me running

Halt to a stop that I could not have seen ahead,

I spend my leisure recounting my defeats and

I evaluate the trauma that I’ve kept.

Do you think that a fifteen year old

Young woman should already comprehend

That love is all-conditional and

Outsiders see the physical

And they’ll demonize what they can’t understand?

I couldn’t see the difference in it

And to this day, I still refuse to ever

Allow strangers to determine my chance

Of ever making it past this stretch.

To think that that’s the least of what I’ve seen;

Sixteen is when I learned to settle for what I can get.

Swore by the oath of the lover to not be loved,

Carved in my thighs, “I’ll never let it get into my head.”

Abandoning my disposition to swim right into his,

Beginning a prolonged hyperventilation ‘round the sun.

God knows every day I grew more tired of feeling inhuman

But I couldn’t see the signs until the 365th.

And I know some others have the answers that I don’t—

The virtue of it all is now I couldn’t care to see it through.

I was just eleven when I first witnessed infidelity,

Only to be crossed the same myself when the scars turned five.

While we’re at it, Judas, why don’t you begin a tally?

Because it seems that I’ll be here a while.

Now who will tell that girl at seventeen

That she might feel it again and again?

And that’s why it’s all agony—

Is it blame or self-accountability?

Finding the balance is what’s tedious

In being a lover to not be loved.

- M. Rose