Glass Rose

On Valentine’s Day

I bought my first serious girlfriend a glass rose.

I stuck it in a giant balloon

And left it on her desk in history class.

Within 5 seconds of finding the gift

She accidently popped balloon

And broke the rose.

And If I’d taken the time to notice

It would be a great metaphor

For our whole relationship.

We would spend a short time as this beautiful thing

And then exhaust the rest of it

Trying to Titanic our way out of a sinking ship.

We Chinese checkered for 5 years

Jumping over each others words

Until we were a mess of colors and mistakes.

Five years of games

Of which we truly loved each other

Maybe six months of.

The rest

Was spent trying to make the other one a menagerie

Of our childhood fantasies.

No one ever told us it was ok not to settle for your first love.

That fairy tales make great stories

But shitty targets.

That forcing a square peg in a round hole can be done

If you break both the pieces

No one ever told us it was ok to be alone.

To not conform your body

Into the tapestry society deems as ok to look at.

As fits the formula.

As comfy.

As “your story has been through too much

To have an ending lacking happy.”

But when it does

Time and time again,

You stop believing in finding love.

And instead,

Start believing in finding tolerance.

And sleeping with tolerance

Is a lot like buying a scooter.

It’s fun for a few minutes

But then you find yourself wondering

"Why the fuck you are riding a scooter?"

She was forgiveness laced insecurity.

I was a romantic

Who believed in the ideal more than the real thing.

Catastrophe scarcely cultivates better candidates.

I held on

Because I thought I was supposed to.

She held on

Because she wanted to believe me at my word.

But words have a funny way of adapting around their circumstances.

Like when saying "I love you"

Can mean both “you make me happy,"

And "you are a tragedy away from ripping me to my core."

Like when saying "I miss you"

Can mean both “your absence is noticed,”

And "where the fuck have you been?"

Like when saying “I forgive you”

Can mean both “let’s move on”

And "this is the last time you hurt me like this."

Like when saying “I hate you”

Can mean both “don’t ever talk to me again”

And “please speak to me again."

On my parent's sixteenth wedding anniversary

My mom took my dad to the top of the Reunion Tower

For a nice dinner

And to see the city.

And it would be a great metaphor for their divorce.

560 feet is a great height to hide from your problems,

But sooner or later,

You have to go back and ground level with them.

And wordless conversations

Sound the same

No matter the elevation.

Maybe no one ever told them

That staying together for the kids

Doesn’t end well for anybody.

Doesn’t teach the proper priorities.

That when love stops being a certainty

And becomes an old friend

You only see on holidays

It’s time to take inventory.

On what the younger you

Dreamed you would hold on to eternally.

Like self love

Passion

Romance

And the ability to speak up.

If there’s one thing my parents taught me

It’s that you can scar someone

Without speaking a word.

That silence is a cancer

If it infects the part of you

That remembers you had standards once.

If it infects the part of you

That lives your life as a metaphor

As being one thing and implying another.

We are all,

All of us

Trying so hard

To be the best metaphors for love.

But I am my parent’s son.

Last Valentines Day

I drove thirty minutes to my girlfriend’s place

To leave a bear holding chocolates

And a rose

On her doorstep.

And prayed that some fuckface didn’t steal it

Before she left for work the next day.

And even after it was still there the next morning,

I tried not to read too much into it.

After all

Metaphors only contain as much meaning

As you give to them.