What love feels like

Sometimes I think people confuse love

with the obligation to feel it.

A father claims to love his daughter,

A mother her son—

but only because they’re supposed to.

Not from depth;

Not from presence;

Not from listening, or seeing, or acceptance.

Any remnants of love

are but revenant murmurs,

haunting mildew-veined walls,

fracturing stained glass windowpanes

in what was meant to be a home.

A porcelain doll, poised and demure,

with glass eyes and a polymer heart,

would serve as a better substitute

for the daughter-shaped gape in their core—

 

Not carved by grief, 

but nurtured by neglect,

stuffed with silence, duty, and regret. 

The love I’ve known—and the kind that knew me—

was only ever a simulacrum in disguise.

Maybe that’s why I don’t know what love feels like, 

or how to open my fist and release it. 

What I do know is that love 

can’t be extracted by force.

It is a flame that brings warmth freely, 

not snuffed out with pried-open palms.

So I guess what I’m saying is:

If I go, then I’m already gone.

My true self slipped away long ago—

No death knell, no time to mourn.

And maybe it’s better that way,

wasn’t that what they wanted all long?

Even if I wished to stay the same 

I couldn’t bear the stain 

of this unbearable shame.

So maybe it’s better this way,

isn’t this what you wanted all along?