By Megs
Date: 29 March 2000
All You Know About Love.
You lose one father at age two to the messy monster they call divorce while you
suck your thumb on the witness stand and mumble something about wanting mommy
and that was enough to determine the rest of your life. Mommy falls in love
with her attorney so you get a new daddy fast enough who reads you Cinderella
and makes up funny voices for the mice and buys you every single Rainbow Brite
doll and at two this is all you know about love.
Blink and you are eight or so with a construction paper bag covered in lace
doilies and red foil hearts and Valentines with Garfield or the Little Mermaid
but especially one from a boy named Frankie. He hands it to you in the coatroom
and kisses you on the cheek real fast and you cry because you know you just
broke the rule about "Keep hands, feet, and all objects to yourself." For the
next two weeks you are his girlfriend but he isn't old enough to call girls on
the phone so the whole thing falls apart and at eight this is all you know about
love and it all seems silly.
Twelve years old you watch your Mom pack bags with a red-violet welt that hadn't
been there when you went to bed but supposedly she slipped and feel. That
doesn't explain why she is going to Grandma's but she stays for two weeks till
your Dad (number two) calls and yells then cries then whispers and she is
coming home. You know where the bruises come from and you sleep restlessly with
a lump in your throat and every muscle tense in your body till you know she is
safe and at twelve years old this is all you know about love and you vow it
will never happen to you.
But you find someone at sixteen. A Homecoming date who you spend six hours and
four hundred dollars getting ready for only to mess up your hair and rip your
hose in the back of his van after the dance doing very little past second base
but still feeling like you broke a commandment. The song that is playing on
the radio becomes your song and you hold hands in the hallway at school and go
on real dates and perfect french kissing in the back of the theater. But he
moves on to the next girl eventually and you write your first angsty poems
cause no you know heartache and at age sixteen this is alll you know about
love.
You are nineteen and a month today and you kiss a different boyfriend goodnight
but he doesn't linger on the porch for an hour to talk like he used to because
after one year and three months and a day you don't have much to say. But he
has held you when you cry and he is the first man you ever made love to and he
makes you dinner cause you can't cook. And he knows your past sins and you know
his but when he says he loves you it makes the record clean. And at nineteen
and a month this is all you know about love.
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