I remember the first guy that told me he loved me. He was the guy down the street in my neighborhood that I’d sneak out of my window at night to sneak into his. He was the guy that I wondered about everyday even when he had nothing to say. He was the guy I wrote a lot of fucking poetry about in the beginning.

You ever been told you were beautiful but only behind doors; held and kissed but only when no-one else was able to see it happen? He was the guy — that guy. Who kept me a secret.

Time went on and as he graduated high school and moved up to New York from our small town named Poinciana in Florida, I was just entering my first year of high school. One day a few weeks after he moved I received a text from him, “I love you.” “Since when?” I asked him. “Always.” he replied. And that was the beginning of my first heart break.

As much as I wanted to believe him and acted as if I did, my heart ached because I knew he didn’t. Maybe he cared about me in his own way but it wasn’t love, not to anyones deserving. And as a teenager after a few years of playing secret-match-made-in-heaven and then receiving a text like that from someone who didn’t even live close by, I was fucked up.

I continued to keep in touch with him but eventually he stopped responding. Finally, I graduated and moved to Miami. Around my second semester in college, I was back in Poinciana visiting friends and somehow we managed to get in touch. We met up on his old block, sat down on a patch of concrete connecting from the road that led just a bit into the grass towards the creek and exchanged ‘I missed you’…

He told me about his idea to join the military, how after a certain period of time he’d be able to have a visitor on base and mentioned he’d like it if it were me. I was surprised and honestly didn’t believe him. I mean, we didn’t even speak up to that moment. 

A few years later and that idea about the military never followed through. Instead, he had a baby with someone up in New York and moved back down to Florida to be closer to his family. But he wasn’t with the mom, they were just co-parenting.

I visited him two times after he moved back down. The first time was shortly after his move while his son was still up in NYC with the mom. The second time and the last time was a few years later, and in the least words, I was done feeling used. I left in the middle of the night before I could see his face while he slept in another room.

That was basically my adolescent romance and first reason for writing a hella lot of poetry.

in love
what if I tell you, i’ve never loved someone
that something has always stopped me
from completely being able to love someone
not just any ‘Love’
because love comes in abundance
and is broken down, thereof.
love that surpasses expectation
and desire,
love because it is just, love.
for everything the other person is.
what if I tell you, I’ve never loved
everything of a person before.
I’ve never experienced it.
I’ve experienced love in many ways:
through happiness
through sex
through anger
through hope
but never, through love.
what if I tell you,
I love you because I’m in love.
not In happiness
in sex
in anger
in hope
but —
in love.