I love like a dog.
Not elegantly.
Not wisely.
Not with the measured dignity
people seem to expect from a heart
that has been hurt before.
I love with my whole body.
I follow.
I wait.
I remember the sound of your footsteps.
I learn the shape of your silences.
I would drag my bleeding heart
across the floor
just to leave it somewhere
you might notice.
And perhaps that is why
love has always arrived
looking slightly wrong.
My first was barely a relationship—
something childish enough
that nobody remembers it anymore,
least of all the people who were there.
Then came a boy
who asked me to be his
because he wanted to be loved,
and I said yes
because someone had finally asked.
What a strange beginning.
I left the next day
because I was already losing
an argument with existence
that had nothing to do with him.
Then there was a girl
who loved women
and tried to make an exception
for the person I was trying to become.
For a while,
we made something tender
out of incompatible pieces.
Eventually,
tenderness was not enough.
Then came someone
who did not love me at all.
He simply learned
how deeply I wanted to be loved
and found a way inside it.
There are people
who hear I would do anything for you
and think of devotion.
There are others
who hear it
and recognize an opening.
He gave me things
I mistook for closeness
until they had teeth.
He followed me
past places I thought were over.
Even now,
sometimes,
his shadow remembers my name.
And then there was the girl
I met in a place
where nobody was supposed
to be falling in love.
Two wounded people
mistaking recognition for rescue.
I loved her.
I loved her enough
to become exhausted
by the weight of loving her.
And I hated myself for that.
Because apparently
I am capable of loving someone
until there is nothing left in me
but resentment—
and then mistaking the resentment
for a failure of love.
That is the part nobody tells you.
Sometimes you do not stop loving someone
because the love disappeared.
Sometimes you stop
because you finally understand
that love is not the same thing
as carrying someone
while you both disappear.
So here I am.
Romantically,
platonically,
quietly,
ferociously—
still loving like a dog.
Still capable of looking at someone
and thinking:
you.
I would choose you.
And perhaps that is the cruelest thing
I have learned:
that there is nothing inherently sacred
about loving without measure.
Some people see an open heart
and do not think home.
They think entrance.
Some see devotion
and do not think trust.
They think leverage.
And I have spent so long
trying to understand
why love keeps hurting me,
as though there must be
some flaw in the way I give it.
But perhaps there is no flaw.
Perhaps I was simply born
with too much of myself
in my hands,
and every time I loved someone
I handed them another piece.
A piece they could keep.
A piece they could break.
A piece they could use
to find the softest place in me.
I used to think my heart was my greatest capacity for love.
Now I think it is simply
the place where anyone who gets close enough
knows exactly where to aim.