Love

When I was thirteen, I dismissed the reflection of a gawky kid in the mirror

And told myself that as soon as I turned sixteen

I would be swept off my feet by some boy

When I was fifteen, I told this boy I had a massive crush on that I liked him

And he told me he didn't feel the same way but it didn't matter

Because I stopped liking him a few months later

I turned sixteen and was that an uneventful year

There was no boy who would sweep me off my feet

Not when I was sixteen, not when I was seventeen and not when I was eighteen

But nineteen held a lot of hope and I did get swept off my feet

Only to learn that adult relationships are complicated

And nothing like the fairytales

I nursed my broken heart for the next few years

Slowly realising, or perhaps, slowly accepting that

I would never have this Hollywoodesque romance

Today I had a glimpse of what my future holds

What I would be like when I'm forty or fifty

And it dawned on me that some of us never get their love story

So I will watch as my friends fall in and out of love

I will talk to people I never see again

And I will learn to live with the kind of loneliness some of us take with us to our graves