The Master of Descriptions

Waiting on Love.

February 4, 2026

If there is one thing I have always known would be the death of me, it is love.

This magnificent, self-appealing yet self-absorbing apple pie plucked from the serpent’s bosom. This love. This acute, myopic, yet so foreign a concept, stemmed from our DNA. How can I not know that which flows inside my veins? How can I not understand it? How can it not make sense? Or have I mastered it so well… to bend it? To backstroke it? Trick it? Fail to discard it?

What amount of surmountable pain would it take to drain the last drop? If it was death, would I cope with it? And of whatever remains of it, would it cease to hold meaning?

I am taken aback to the very first classroom corridors where I ever knew the concept of love. I was eight years old. love began with a slight sight — the true windows to the soul — then to the mind to process, and to the heart to stir emotions. It was an innocent idea, later scarred by definitions of beauty, or rather, standards of operation.

Love existed as mere amusement, traded through laughter, smiles, and such things as holding hands, trimming fingers, or the fantasy of it. Just the mere existence of someone made you happy. The devilish fact that you could wake up every day and see the same face over and over — just standing in the crowded distance — watching in awe, thinking what ifs upon what ifs.

But soon, love changes meaning; it has to be expressed.

So I do so the best way I know how. I pen prose and poetry because, you know, the language of poets is seditious and never redundant. The point is: how cruelly can you wield your words into another’s submission? And when they submit, will it be by will, or will it be through coercion of your words? And once it is over, will it end by will?

I recall such times when love was the pride of everything. It deemed you important and elevated your social status amongst your mates. And that wasn’t just love; it was something else. We were coming of age, learning to coexist with this new concept that churns adults into fools, and elevates foolish teenagers into adults.

Then we grew older, and innocence stopped being enough. Everything changed; bodily changes and heightened emotions. Sex became a desire. So we consummated. We explored thoroughly.

In our exploration, we broke each other’s bones. There came a tagline called body counts, and oh girl — when they said the goal was to score a goal, then baby girl, we both scored successive hat tricks, trampling over each other, forgetting all the promises we made.

Because again, what? There’s no way to stick to one when you’re young and there’s full life ahead of you. What is it that we used to call it: The early years of our twenty-fine?

And since the first day our innocence broke away – after learning how to trade our genitals for affection – love no longer arrives free, it comes with a receipt.

Then comes the age of absolution. When you’ve been there and done all that. When every inkling of desire screams that we can’t eat love for breakfast, even if it’s a morning glory.

Gone were the days when that line made you smile and catapulted egos into existence. Gone are the days when We wrapped our bodies into each other like worms protesting the light.

Right now, love feels like a ship. To board it, you must have the right papers. And that’s the tragedy, because love, by its very definition, has become transactional.

You must first know what you’re paying for before you ever dare to sail.

Midst this, I’m still waiting on love.
Waiting on it feels like searching for a job after graduation
qualified,
hopeful,
exhausted…
and still unpaid.