It’s not that I don’t love you.
It’s the sound I heard when I was 11
of my mother slamming the car door. I swear
to God, she broke it.
for the next six years, I watched my dad be good
to my mom.
I promise you this

my dad hasn’t been the same since.

It’s not that I don’t love
you.
It’s my dad screaming
and yelling at me. It’s my mom defending
me saying “every time you tell her you
yell at her out of love, she confuses anger
with kindness, and she will love
monsters cause they look like you.”
It’s not that I don’t

love you.
It’s me sitting
in the emergency room,
wondering if my cousin would
be okay because the boy she loved
left.
And now she
hasn’t eaten
for a month straight.
I watched her poison her lips
with every bottle available.

It’s not that I
don’t love you.
It’s me recalling the night
my best friend cried
for two days straight
because her boyfriend had sex
with his ex.
She cried and shrieked and threw up
on my bedroom floor.

It’s not that
I don’t love you.
It’s the gagging,
hot lights,
pale sneakers,
crying faces,
broken voices,
and blood. So much
blood. I swear to god
she still has mascara stains.
I think when you love
someone, it never really goes away.

It’s the five
weeks that my coaches assistant
taught us basketball because my
coach was getting divorced. She was
too depressed
to get
out of bed.
When she came back
she smiled
but missed every
free throw. You could see
something was broken beyond repair.

And it happens to be that
when things break, you
can’t fix them.
Nothing ever goes back

to the way it was.
Its not
that I
don’t love
you.
Its that,
I
do.