Touching

Squeezing

Pushing

Taking

Yelling

Screaming

Hitting

Taking

Holding

Tying

Lying

TAKING

This is not love

I live for love

To be cherished, respected, listened to

But this is not love

No

No

NO

I say

My words wisp away, white mist in the black nature of this love

This is not love.

Fear

Silence

Silence

Always looking over my shoulder, always making sure I say and do and make and serve the right things

This is not love. 

My cover is the night

The 3ams

The times he cannot see my tears

My tears glow in the moonlight but if he does not see them then they are not there

I cannot make a sound so I crawl into the blackness of my mind

Everything is black

This is not love.

There I can sleep

And dream

And wish

And crave

I crave the light touches and the light kisses and the light ways he tells me that I am beautiful

I am black but I want the light.

This is not love.

Love lives in the light, love lives in the asking and the talking and the letting free

Love lives in the truth

I am sad, now, because in this blackness we are both liars

He lies and tells me he sees only me

I lie and tell him I love him, too

This is not love.

Love makes up the light and makes the dark worth living through.

Love is the light at the end of those black tunnels

I have no tunnel

I have no light at the end

Maybe I’ll just stay in my blackness

Forever