I Don'T Love You.. Poem by Marcus Lomboy

I don’t love you.
It’s not that I don’t. And it’s not that I can’t.
It’s because I don’t want to love you.

See…I refuse to let what we have be generalized into something any less specific than how we define it ourselves. How we feel about each other. How we see ourselves. And how we explain it.

Music, movies and poetry, can’t say as much as I could. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I could either. You make me feel like…some word that hasn’t even been invented yet…I’m infloveuated.

Because a made up word is the only way I can tell you how I feel. Not through this poem, not through the many I’ve written you. And not through the songs I’ve written for you…But through a word that means more than “love”. A word that hasn’t been used so many times and thrown around so casually it’s lost its true meaning.

You see…that’s exactly what’s happened to “love”. I still hold it by the same standards as William Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda. But the people like me in this world are running out. While you are incomparable.
Yet I still can’t love you.

But I’d actually say that I loved you, for the sole purpose of keeping your attention for a few minutes longer while I finish this poem.
Then maybe you’d see that I can’t really love you…Nor do I want to.

Because those who have “loved” and have “been loved” have already been through enough. They have been misused, mistreated, abused, misunderstood and ignored.
Just like the word. And just like its meaning.

Love’s been bandied about too much. From countless love songs to Hallmark cards, it’s not as personal as it used to be. It used to mean something. It used to mean you actually “loved” something. Now it just means you like it a lot.
He might “love” you. But I love banana Slurpees from 7-11. So you’re obviously equal to a frozen, artificial beverage…So what should you believe?

I don’t put faith in a single word that’s supposed to embody the deepest of human emotions. One that consists of a single syllable. So instead, I craft a picture with a thousand words.
Though not one of them say that I want to love you,

There’s no word for the bond that I want to share with you. A bond that gives me superpowers just being close to you. A bond that makes me rethink about my entire outlook on life and look at it in another way. A bond that makes me want to grow up, be mature and suit up. A bond that makes me wish that I had met you the day I was born. Because I can look back and regret every single second I’ve spent without you in my life.

I’m not talking about 007…I’m talking about a bond that makes me write down every single thing I like about you, then try to decide if I love them, or if I just like them. But I just can’t seem to finish the list. I’m talking about a bond where I know exactly what you’re thinking. A bond where I can finish your sentences…but I don’t, because the sound of your voice sets my soul on fire.
Don’t get it wrong…I don’t love you.

But I do want to be like your living, breathing diary. The one you open your heart to when you have no one else to talk to. Fill me in…fill me up with words as I let the ink sink into every crevice and every pore, and I come to understand you better than anyone else ever could.
Though I still couldn’t love you.

But I do want to be there for you. I want to be the ear you confide in, the eyes you gaze into, the hand you hold and the shoulder you cry on. But most of all, I want to be the one that puts a smile on your face.

I want to share a connection so deep, that the fathoms of my heart and my mind intertwining with yours could be bridged from across the universe. With thoughts alone, I could share with you, the most intimate conversation from across a crowded room. I want to be your BFF. So that no matter how mad we get at each other, we couldn’t stay that way for long. Then as quickly as it all started, we make up and everything would be fine again because we know each other will always be there.

But “love” won’t. It’s on life support and there’s nothing we can do to make the notion of love last longer. I think it’s time to pull the plug and restart with a whole other concept, and a whole other word. A word that means more than what “love” has devolved into.

But we could get together and recreate everything that that word was supposed to mean. Erase the undefined, yet cliché definition of it, and rewrite it ourselves with invisible ink. Because no one else needs to see it. You see, love is a whole lot like faith. And it’s a whole lot like the wind. You know it’s there, but you can’t see it. Neither can you explain it.

It’s the same way how I feel about you. And I’m pretty sure it’s not “love” I’m feeling.
Because I don’t love you…and I can’t love you. Neither do I want to.
You see…I’m already infloveuated.