They are always awkward, overzealous, and sometimes insulting,

Just like the people that write them.

They are a difficult and chaotic mess of meandering emotions,

Looking for something to make sense,

While trying to make some ugly truths feel prettier.

The way that love poems describe the appearance of the eyes, the mouth, and the reflecting sunlight

Is only skin-deep and fails to create a vision of true loveliness with candor.

The same lips you kiss can push you away,

And that illumination can be blinding.

Yet, love is not a perfect science.

The physical is like physics –

It concerns itself with matters and mechanics that are of limited, but increasing, understanding.

Attraction is like magnetism,

It draws you in, but also highlights the repulsive.

And the heat of charm makes you feel warmth from raw energy,

But it just might burn you.

The gravitas of these theories can bring you down.

They make you into gravity’s plaything and floor you.

You stare up and become reminded of the lost summer nights,

Stargazing, and think about Astrology –

The study of the movements and relative positioning of celestial objects as a means of divining purpose.

Looking for some sign,

How compatible is that really in love?

Romance poets claim to be love doctors.

They probably are not cardiologists,

So why concern themselves with matters of the heart?

Yet, I suppose that love poetry should really ask,

“What do you believe in?

Where should we begin?”

Writing a love poem should be like building a life.

I want to create a home that is worthy of you,

I want to wake up feeling like the first time that I heard “Country Road” by John Denver,

Sit across from you with our hair disheveled,

Mouths filled with fistfuls of dry cereal,

And to greet the coming times like good company on our doorstep.

I want you to know that I am better for having loved you.

It is the easiest thing that I’ll ever do.

We had been living a life of maybes and “I’ll try” for long enough,

Where the problem with the future was the present,

Making the past that much sweeter,

And the potential of the unknown terrifying.

Yet, what you choose to do now matters.

The journey begins today.

To create something worthwhile that may result in failure,

And heartbreak,

But It is an investment that is worth holding yourself accountable for.

Let’s create situations that we’ll miss.

I want to be able to look back and regret moments that can never be replicated,

And that will be remembered with a slight patina, like an old photograph.

As it ages, the memory will fade, but those feelings might linger.

C.S. Lewis, a writer of fanciful fiction, once said,

“Don’t let your happiness depend on something that you may lose.”

I doubt that he ever imagined that

The most meaningful things in life can be.

Afterall,

Tragedy is beautiful

And so are you.