Sometimes, love’s been no more than the slant of sunlight on the bridge of your nose; sometimes it’s been catching your eye across a room full of faces.

This isn’t a guide of who not to fall in love with, but you may find inspiration to see love in a clear light with this author’s personal experience. Read on. 

I grew up with an idea of who to love. Then with going through the sword and fire of loves lost to the time and wear of life, I began to choose who to love, how to love, why I choose to love, how I love who I choose to love. It’s been a decade spent in these hitches and sometimes I think I’ve come too far in to create or conquer sense now. There are certain moments I began marking like the time your clavicle eclipsed the north star.

Whether it’s Disney-inspired knights with bright eyes and wet kisses, or the unmistakable glimpses of my father in the first man I adored, or the heady rush of my first crush, it’s funny how little the unshakable acne and your pre-pubescent voice mattered then, the more I’ve fallen in love, the more unsure I’ve been of it. Sometimes, love’s been no more than the slant of sunlight on the bridge of your nose; sometimes it’s been catching your eye across a room full of faces, most times it’s been an idea I go to bed with every night.

Spend enough time making mistakes, chasing what always remains slightly out of reach, enough nights curling up with my desire, enough scraps of paper scribbling my goodbyes on, life has had a way of teaching me the exact opposite of what I ever wanted to know.

You’ve wanted Hollywood, and I, the village. I have felt the wax wind startle the crease of your brows even as my lap has been a sunny sprawling lost-and-found for lost angels; there have been secrets clumped as cobwebs in my head even as your fingers have untangled the knots of my soul.

I’ve been afraid of sleeping lest I cry pools in my dreams; silly me. Little did I know you were stripping yourself naked of your lies and shame over breakfast while my eyes searched for golden bridges glossing over shared shopping lists.

You self-indulgent extrovert, my sunshine melting rejection’s hurt, my plastic smiling idea of true hearts to true fakes, you’ve had a closet of holocaust victims to return to even as I’ve woken up to a morning full of the feeling of letting go.

And we’ve come back around, spinning the whitest of lies, platinum rimmed, heady with our own delusions and we’ve held hands against the backdrop of a fake moonlight and shared kisses like stolen wine at the back of dirty buses, even when love has felt as stagnating as being convinced of it, even when you’ve washed off the heat off my lips while I’ve ignored your sputtering heartbeat, when I’ve written hate poems in my head and you’ve felt obese with feelings, when you’ve drank too much whiskey and I’ve held onto you like a crucifix, when you’ve made up stories to make me smile while I played hardball staring into the empty bowl of soup, and we both realize we’ve grown up together in a city with its share of madmen at red lights and its lack of starlight or clarity and we’ve looked into each others eyes and known we’ve been exiled from its routine when with each other.

With you, I learnt true love was an ordeal; the lesser loves a respite from it. Like the pages ripped out of a badly written romance novel or an unexpected anti-climax, sometimes love has just been as simple as wishing the sky would unhinge and blow me a kiss or a spine, or spit at me, or that you would tell me you love me so that I finally know that this isn’t real.

You’ve known that I’ve dreamt of changing winds and self explanatory smiles and a manual to hand-holding or being the ideal girlfriend, and I’ve felt the grass and dust crawl between my toes and wished my love could be a little less transitory than the scribbles of the lonely killing time on dreary restroom walls.

Once upon a time there was you and I. Things happened very fast that year, where I’ve seen the scripts of your dreams in your eyes even as you’ve explained how your dog pissed on your bed.

The world was convinced we were exchanging kitschy secrets every time we looked at each other.

You came into my life very quick, and I liked it. You had deep jazz looks, and a little boy smile and I’d seen you crash onto my right palm, I look at you and I know I can barely bring myself to accept what we have. Maybe because not having it would be so devastating. I felt like I was on fire with all the things I could’ve told you. I assumed you’d eventually ask.