The extremist kind of love
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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?