WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE?

 What love looks like?

What does love look like the therapist asks 

one week after the breakup

and i’m not sure how to answer her question 

except for the fact that i thought love 

looked so much like you

that’s when it hit me

and i realized how naive i had been 

to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person

as if anybody on this entire earth 

could encompass all love represented

as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for 

would look like a five foot eleven 

medium-sized brown-skinned guy 

who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast.

 What does love look like? The therapist asks again

this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence

and at this point i’m about to get up 

and walk right out the door

except i paid far too much money for this hour

so instead i take a piercing look at her

the way you look at someone 

when you’re about to hand it to them

lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation

eyes digging deeply into theirs

searching for all the weak spots 

they have hidden somewhere

hair being tucked behind the ears

as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation 

on the philosophies or rather disappointments 

of what love looks like. Well i tell her

i don’t think love is him anymore

if love was him

he would be here wouldn’t he ?

if he was the one for me

wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me?

if love was him it would have been simple

i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat

i think love never was

i think i just wanted something

was ready to give myself to something 

i believed was bigger than myself

and when i saw someone 

Who could probably fit the part

i made it very much my intention 

to make him my counterpart

and i lost myself to him 

he took and he took

wrapped me in the word special

until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me

hands only to feel me

a body only to be with me

oh how he emptied me.

How does that make you feel?

interrupts the therapist

well i said

it kind of makes me feel like shit

maybe we’re all looking at it wrong

we think it’s something to search for out there 

something meant to crash into us 

on our way out of an elevator

or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere

appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore

looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual

but i think love starts here

everything else is just desire and projection 

of all our wants needs and fantasies

but those externalities could never work out 

if we didn’t turn inward and learn

how to love ourselves in order to love other people

love does not look like a person

love is our actions

love is giving all we can

even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake

love is understanding 

we have the power to hurt one another

but we are going to do everything in our power 

to make sure we don’t

love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve

and when someone shows up 

saying they will provide it as you do

but their actions seem to break you 

rather than build you 

love is knowing whom to choose.

                                    - Rupi Kaur