Emma Young
 A little friendly love advice on communication, expression, bravery, and friendship told through poetry:
 
5.2.TW
 
Texting is not conversation.
 
My mood has been a steady biorhythm
For the past six months
In which I’ve known you.
Up and down based on:
Have you replied? Did you see my message? Was my text too long?
Mostly down because:
You didn’t reply, though you’d seen my message,
And I’ve been the only text bubble for the past five days.
And that isn’t fair -
Of me.
 
Because that’s not how we were built
I was not made to understand you upon the basis of characters through a screen
You were not made to be understood through the twenty six letters at your fingertips.
We were made with voices:
Volumes, pitches, intonations, registers,
But maybe people prefer the meanings the make up,
Molding black and white into paranoia.
So I know this isn’t love
Because I’m not brave enough to hear your voice catch
Or show you what I sound like when I break.
 
Never devalue the honesty of gestures.
 
He doesn’t give her a diamond necklace every month;
He doesn’t book flights to Paris,
Or pay for meals at the Ritz,
Because she knows that isn’t love.
 
Yesterday I cried because
(well I was emotional for a start)
But on her ottoman
Is a binder that talks about her leaving
And running off to Boston.
He stars as the caterpillar trying to eat the leaves until fall never happens,
But in the end she’s chasing dreams
So he flies after her.
 
He hides under her bed in the dorm to surprise her with a stuffed dog -
This is Valentine’s day.
And she writes him songs
That we sometimes sing in,
And they have one of the few wedding boards on Pinterest
That I believe in.
 
If you’re waiting on someone else, you’re doomed to wait a while.
 
She was every situation I couldn’t get into
and I was the answer ‘no’ to every question.
And I knew too little and too much to know it wasn’t love.
 
So I wrote a song about it –
Isn’t that what you do in high school?
(Which is an absolute lie, I’d do it again any day.)
There won’t be a day when I’m not embarrassed about it
When I don’t laugh at myself confessing my feelings through song
Making her sit and listen.
 
And that might have been a kind of love
Enough that I don’t regret having done it.
Enough that there was something enough there that a year later I had to ask
“Promise me nothing will ever happen?”
Because if it wasn’t in writing I wouldn’t let it go.
And now I’m here, a city away,
No strings attached.
So maybe I’ll blush when someone mentions it
Maybe I’ll smack my forehead for calling it love
But I won’t ever regret that I spoke whatever it was
Because it’s only time wasted if you silence your tongue.
 
Love is more than romance.
 
Even if you have to be reminded on a cold Monday with the stomach flu.
My roommates have rehearsal every night,
7-11.
They run from class to meeting to next item on the agenda,
And I lie in bed with a bucket by my head
Wondering how to stay hydrated when I can’t stand up straight.
 
Sometimes love is the form of a bottle of Gatorade,
Waking up to it on your desk
Because your busy roommates ran up to your room between
Work, rehearsal, and homework,
Even though the sink was ten feet away and you could manage on your own
If you really needed to.
Because love is an inconvenience
And inconveniencing yourself.
 
Love is laughter
Which we say too often, and maybe we’ve forgotten the truth to it.
Most of the time I don’t know if it’s love,
But some nights I get up to grab a spoon
And then stand in the doorway, watching my friends on the floor
Sharing a tub of ice cream and trying to laugh
Without choking on Ben and Jerry’s,
And those nights are the clearest parts of my memory.
Most love is fickle
But there will always be a constant.
 

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