THE LIST OF UGLINESS

(Artwork, G. Cordero on Unsplash)

Love muddles sometimes.

Old wounds throb beneath our skin, our pulse spins and bolts, and suddenly Pandora crashes through the floorboards, all smirks and pearl-twirling as she brandishes a list of grievances that slowly unrolls and keeps on unrolling, spewing a lifetime of secrets, frustrations, failures, broken dreams, guilt and shame and misunderstandings and anger and fear fear FEAR.

And as emotions haemorrhage, we grab this list of ugliness to shake at each other, but it becomes love tangled, hobbling us, toppling us, strangling our thoughts, choking our words.

Pandora rolls her eyes, stiletto-turns and stalks out, all hips and attitude.

So, we sit, winded, undone, imprisoned in our tear-soaked list of grievances, eyeing each other with wild, love-hurt eyes, wondering how we got here and how we might clean up this mess.