What Love Is

Love does not evaporate

like a name scratched off a lease

or an exiled photograph

turned face down

in a drawer.

No.

Love is matter.

It shifts.

It reforms.

It learns new grammar.

I do not believe

you can forget a body

you once memorized—

the cadence of their breathing,

the geography of their silence,

how their laughter

sat heavy or light

against your collarbone.

You may outgrow them.

You may outlive

who you were beside them.

But forgetting?

That is a myth

we tell ourselves

so we can sleep.

Love is not always soft.

Sometimes it is greedy—

all elbows and appetite,

taking more

than it gives.

Sometimes it is ice—

a blue distance

between two people

who used to share heat.

Sometimes it is sun—

loud and relentless,

demanding to be felt,

bright enough

to tan the scars

it left behind.

They told us

love was unconditional,

as if we were oceans

with no shoreline.

But even oceans

have boundaries.

Even tides

refuse to stay.

Love cannot be

all-consuming.

Anything

that swallows you whole

is not love.

It is hunger.

And hunger

will call itself holy

just to justify the feast.

I believe

you meet people

for a reason

or a season.

And sometimes

you are the season

in someone else’s storm.

But the body—

this brown, breathing archive—

does not survive

on hate.

Hate tightens the chest,

warps the spine,

turns the tongue

to rust.

The body remembers love

because it must.

Because warmth

keeps blood moving.

Because even broken hearts

continue to pump.

So no.

I do not believe

love is forgotten.

It becomes smaller,

or wiser,

or distant.

It becomes a scar

you can press

without wincing.

It becomes a lesson

stitched

into your voice.

When you say,

I once loved.

And somewhere

in that sentence—

even if quiet—

it still lives.