Incredible/Terrible

I am incredible at falling in love.

I do it every day, in fits and starts, in great gasping leaps. I strain to reach aching depths of it, sing for it, laugh with it, delight in the trip and fall of it.

I breathe poetry and taste spunsugarsweetness.

I fall in love with ease, devouring down all that will be told to me, all that will be shared. I consume with careless frenzy, and make a mess of the meal offered to me, fully absorbing the whole of it with the kind of delight that only those who’ve tasted it can know.

But —

I am terrible at loving.

I am terrible at loving.

In refusing to be vulnerable, in refusing to admit fault, I am only a shadow of love, playacting at best, resentful of being asked to cut myself open to another.

I am terrible at loving, at giving, at giving up and giving in, in any real way.

I know the way, the map, the academic’s approach to loving; I know the yawning abyss that waits below the thin rope which stretches across. I know so many go tripping across with great care and speed and skill and faith. Not me. Not me.

But —

I am incredible at falling in love.