Love is like tea, filling up a cup

Poured into another’s heart with tender grace.

Warm enough to comfort,

but never to burn your tongue,

tinged with the flavor of yearning and serenity.

It steams with a relaxing haze,

Refilling from the bottomless teapot that is one’s heart whenever the cup is drained.

For me, it spills over my broken edges onto the tablecloth

Staining the linen a deep umber.

My love is too much and too little

Comprised of all the wrong ingredients

Bitter notes overpowering the two cubes of sugar I dropped in.

There’s no tugging on heartstrings,

Even though the idea of falling like Icarus, plummeting into the sea, is intoxicating.

So my love is locked inside jars,

Fermenting inside my rib cage

Until it’s something to be savored in the late hours of the night.

Oh, I hope I will love the way the world wants me to,

I need not search for it fruitlessly.

Some days my love will leak onto the floor

And we’ll clean up the mess with rubber gloves and paper towels

On other days, my cup will be drained, with only crushed leaves as a reminder that it was ever full

I will wait for the tea in my teapot to cool,

If it means one day we can sit at the kitchen table

With our mismatched cups

and steep ourselves in it without being burned.