one: i loved you. in the way a young boy loves the first star he ever lays his eyes on, in the way an actor loves that first moment they step on stage. i loved you, in the way that misery loves company and arsenic loves lace.

two: i grew up thinking love was thanksgiving dinner in a nursing home because my grandmother couldn't live on her own anymore. i grew up thinking that love was careening into an emergency room, tears fresh on my face because i was helpless as my mother's seizure wracked her body. love was listening to my father talk and vent and rage because sometimes a man with bipolar disorder only needs a second pair of ears.

three: your smile was my favourite thing about you and when we kissed, i could taste the sun on your lips. the bow of your grin was food for my soul and i was blooming.

four: in those last few weeks, your kiss became wooden. how do you love when what you love is a statue?  when what you love won't look you in the eye, when what you love sprouts roots that confine you from the outside, in?

five: nine months. we were together for nine months. a lot can happen in nine months. you can start a family, learn a new language, write a poem. in nine months you can read twenty books from cover to cover. in nine months you can teach yourself something new, in nine months you can see the world from a stranger's eyes. in nine months you can fall in love. you can plant a tree.

six: when a strangler fig begins to grow, it does not begin shooting upwards, but instead turns its roots to the ground. the soil it craves providing the nutrients it needs, but a strangler fig becomes greedy. it searches for life in a place where none need be found, it takes the food, the drink from its neighbours, wrapping itself over and under and around every available surface. when a strangler fig begins to grow, it begins to take.

seven: one week after we ended, you began again. it was valentine's day and you were out on  a date and i was out with friends, lying in their faces when they asked me if  i was alright.

eight: no. i was not alright.

nine: i hate him. and her and him and her and everyone else who has come after me, because they aren't me. and i hate me for hating them, because it is not their fault that your roots are vices, holding on to any life you can find.

ten: i loved you, but you were poison ivy, creeping into every crack, seam, crevice of my life. you stained my world, you were my world. and when did the word love become synonymous with you, when did friendship mean you, when did life rewrite itself in the dictionary as you? you took, and i gave.

eleven: i used to believe that love meant taking care of others. but now i know: love is taking care of yourself.