The Way You Love

Under the Cherry Moon – Bella Weeks

The Way You Love

Shirley Yang

If only I could love you the way you love me.

You love in gentle smiles, like the touch of a rose petal.

You love in attentive eyes, always following mine

and twinkling like stars.

You love in kind words, soft spoken and uncertain,

pouring from your lips like sweet honey.

You love in all the ways I cannot.

I can’t love in words. They always come out

too harsh and sharp and jagged.

Sometimes, on a bad day, they hurl at you

and leave you spending sleepless nights wondering

what you did wrong.

You could never do anything wrong.

I can’t love in affections. When you put your hand

on my face, all I feel is burning,

a sting from a previous lover who cut and carved

into me until there was nothing left.

I flee from touch as much as you long for it,

as much as a bird longs to fly.

I can’t love in time. While you desire for company,

I relish in the company of solitude.

The noises of the world chip away at me,

tossing me around like a ship in a storm.

I can only spend small amounts of time with others

before I must retreat to the calm, quiet port

of my mind.

I can’t love you selflessly, the way you love me.

You let me love another, silently holding back your pain

with another soft smile plastered on your face.

You let me forget about you, so caught up in

the whirlwind of a first love, that I never

noticed you were there as well.

You let me, because you only wanted to

see me happy.

I can only provide a shoulder to cry on,

but never soothing words.

I can provide a solution to your problem,

but never the one you’re looking for.

I can be there to speak up when you’re unable to,

but can’t give the support you need to do it yourself.

Perhaps it’s less that I can’t love,

and more that I’m too scared to.

After my first foray into it ended so badly,

could you blame me for regarding it

with only suspicion from then on?

You welcome it so warmly, so eager to be

caught up in the embrace of love,

while I build a fortress around myself,

lest another fraud sneaks their way into

my heart, only to shatter it in the end.

No I, shrewd, cold, with nothing left to give,

cannot love you the way you love me.

I cannot love you the way you deserve to be loved.