Forms of Love

Image by Karsenika


Forms of Love


I love you but I'm married.
I love you but I wish you had more hair.
I love you more.
I love you more like a friend.
I love your friends more than you.
I love how when we go into a mall
and classical muzak is playing,
you can always name the composer.
I love you, but one or both of us is/are fictional.
I love you but "I" am an unstable signifier.
I love you saying, "I understand the
semiotics of that" when I said, "I
had a little personal business to take care of."
I love you as long as you love me back.
I love you in spite of the restraining order.
I love you from the coma you put me in.
I love you more than I've ever loved anyone,
except for this one guy.
I love you when you're not getting drunk and stupid.
I love how you get me.
I love your pain, it's so competitive.
I love how emotionally unavailable you are.
I love you like I'm a strange backyard
and you're running from the cops,
looking for a place to stash your gun.
I love your hair.
I love you but I'm just not that into you.
I love you secretly.
I love how you make me feel
like I'm a monastery in the desert.
I love how you defined grace
as the little turn the blood in the
syringe takes when you're shooting heroin,
after you pull back the plunger slightly
to make sure you hit the vein.
I love your mother, she's the opposite of mine.
I love you and feel a powerful spiritual connection
to you, even though we've never met.
I love your tacos!
I love your stick deodorant!
I love it when you tie me up with ropes
using the knots you learned in Boy Scouts,
and when you do the stoned Dennis
Hopper rap from Apocalypse Now!
I love your extravagant double takes!
I love your mother,
even though I'm nearly her age!
I love everything about you except your hair.
If it weren't for that I know
I could really, really love you.

Kim Addonizio

Posted over on The Writer's Almanac