poem

 Love is a Getaway

You’ve been living in exile. The sign reads “Love, 10 miles ahead”. Your favorite dead uncle once told you, love is a getaway. So you follow the arrow. You come to a gate. On the other side of the gate is a town. Everyone there looks like you or your beloved. The bakery has only heart shaped macarons. The hardware store sells dark chocolate hammers. The cobbler repairs stiletto heels for a dollar. Eventually everyone has to get a job. You have to work for it. Nothing comes for free. At the end of the month you run the numbers. Whatever you put in should be matched by what goes out. The rich are rich because of the love they save. Every month they set a little aside but it compounds and adds up quick. Starts spilling out of their nostrils and ear holes so they reinvest all the profits. They make love do all the work. It becomes a perpetual stream of passive income. The poor, on the other hand, love too much. They’re careless and profligate with it. As a currency it loses all value. When they try to buy what they need they’re told that all their poems are written on worthless paper. They thought it was real the way play money is real in the game of Monopoly. They thought it was unlimited. That even if you ran out you could just tear up a bunch of scraps of paper and color them red, green and blue. That it was still legal tender. That every time they reached into their pockets it would always be there. That you would always accept it. But they’ve come to the wrong town. You must be thinking of Love, Ohio. That’s three states over. They start to realize they’ve been playing someone else’s game. A bunch of them band together and storm the gates. It’s a getaway. Fugitives on the loose, once again. Years later they settle down together in nice cabins by a river. Everyone got tired of running. This is their home now. They call it love.

3/7/25