It’s Not Love… - J-Rae Tedtaotao

When I was 13 I experienced loss before love

and for that I never stepped up to love’s challenge

since then I have been running from it,

and now I can feel it catching up and

its breath on my neck

but I am too scared to turn around.

Though my back is towards love

my face is facing you and

all I can see are stars around my head

like I have fallen.

All I can feel are butterflies in my tummy,

not like the first day of kinder, but the day before that.

I look at you and I see laughter in my day

even though I'm being robbed of my roots

by this new way of living.

I cannot breathe when I am with you

I cannot breathe when I'm without you

it feels as if I have died and gone to heaven

and all the angels want to take my hand

but the only one I want to hold hands with is you

when I am with you, my world stops and turns the

other way making more sense and being senseless

at the same time, if that made any sense at all…

When I talk to you my words are all jumbled inside

me and it is just amazing how you hear it so clearly

when it comes out.

Some would say I am too young to fall in love

but time is running out and the more

I live the shorter life gets and plus,

it does not take a rocket scientist to know you

love someone.

I think its very strange how people ask,

‘How do you know when you’re in love?’

Hello? It’s the same way you know when you need the bathroom

you feel it...

You can say all you want that I don’t

know what I am talking about but remember

not every scientist knows why H₂O is water

not every mathmetician knows why pi is 3.14

not every english teacher know why i comes before e

except after c it’s like

what the heck makes all the other letters so special

that c has to be excluded.

Where I am going here is that

not all of us always know what we

are talking about, but that is no reason

to not speak at all.

Maybe I do not understand love but hey

I don’t understand 99 percent of the things

our leaders are doing to us so

what the heck makes love any harder to have in life

but just to shut people up

and get them off my back.

I will not call this love, no...

this is you and I, or me and you

however the heck they fit to see it

all they need to know is that

it is us against them

because I have your back

and you have mine

and even though I have never stepped

up to the challenges of love

all that time I have been running I have seen other relationships

fall and I have learned what not to do to you.

And now it is catching up and

I can feel its breath on my neck

but since I am standing

face to face with you

I don’t have to worry about

turning around…

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J-Rae Tedtaotao (21st century) Guam

Source: Guampedia