Everyone likes to talk about love
how it fills a place in you,
makes you more than what you are alone:
how it fills you with wonder,
with strength,
intensity,
devotion,
peace.
Love is surely the most powerful force in the universe:
songs are written about it,
people aspire to it.
Generation after generation
have spent their whole lives
yearning toward finding
this elusive, yet intrinsic, part of life:
this sense of wholeness and completion,
of unity.
…and yet...
when love goes wrong,
really wrong,
when something so heinous happens,
...when you are not simply just angry,
this is no simple disappointment,
no collapse into sad, miserable, loneliness.
No,
this is a transubstantiation
of epic and mythic proportions,
when hate takes root in your heart:
it fills a space.
To hate another human being takes energy,
it is fierce and alive,
it requires life force to sustain it.
When the devil spawn of hate
well and truly bursts forth from its hideous seed
upon the fecund soil of your heart:
it has meaning,
it has a purpose;
...perhaps and ugly one,
true,
because to hate is to harness
every fiber of your being
into the hurling of all the venom
and curses
your pitiful body is capable
of coagulating at any given moment,
and aiming it like sputum at the suchness of another.
…and there are many things we say we hate,
but let’s be real,
you don’t really hate brussell sprouts, or raw broccoli.
You might possibly hate the DMV, but surely not Target for not carrying that shoe in your size.
You don’t really hate Netflix for never having that movie you want to watch.
You may loath getting stuck in traffic,
but loathing and hate are two separate experiences.
To loath is to detest, it is of contempt,
you loath that which is beneath you.
...but to hate is more.
To hate is to selectively turn every ounce of your existence
into a laser beam of destruction,
a spiritual ICBM, with your spiritual finger
hovering
poised
ready
waiting
a micron from
the utter annihilation
of your bitterest, most mortal foe
with no possibility of regret
but rather delight
in their every misfortune.
You smile when they fail,
they are your nemesis;
everything they say or do
your very existence
redirects
to slay
to lay waste
to repudiate
to make war upon
this creature who dares to walk the earth:
this affront to your own precious existence.
Whatever atrocity they committed,
they have earned
this unmitigated,
white phosphorus hatred
that you fan
to a slow burn
to sustain it.
When someone says, “I hate you,”
you either think, pff, no you don’t,
that’s stupid. You’re a little shit
that can’t use your words right;
or
you know
you KNOW
they’ve been hoarding their essence
in their poison glands
waiting
poised
ready
to jettison their vitriol at you
like a cannon load
of steaming hot, biohazardous shit
they have collected and crafted
into a projectile
especially for you...
...and you know...
you know
they really mean it.
…my mother taught me about hate,
deep in the night
on a porch
on the coast
on the fourth of July.
Three words,
I hate you,
sworn like an oath
repeated like a mantra
a terrible truth
invested
with all that is vile and unholy.
I hate you.
I HATE you.
The impotence of words
of a fist
she dared not let fly
but rather
she christened me
with blood
right between the eyes
by the blade
of a crumpled beer can
she launched at my face.
I HATE you.
My mother taught me about rage,
about the ancient parts of my brain
that operate my limbs
without comprehension or will;
about disappearing and reappearing
from one location in space to another,
fist raised
poised to destroy.
Do it, she said.
…and then how to turn away.
To pivot, and exit,
leaving the battle field,
the battle lost,
but the war to wage on.
I hate YOU.
But hate takes energy to sustain.
It is a weapon, it is a shield,
it is both a friend and a lover,
and when it leaves you,
the loss is perceptible.
The absence where you kept
votives burning
at a corner on the alter of your heart,
where once the black thorned blossom bloomed,
it hath withered and died of its own volition,
for it is alive,
and nothing lasts forever.
And you can choose whether or not
to reincarnate it.
To resurrect it like Frankenstein,
a hideous monster
cobbled together
from parts of memories
and wisps of distant misdeeds.
You can choose to see it reborn again,
an infant, it grows, gains in complexity,
matures, ages,
like a a musky cheese
you savor as you roll it around your mouth.
We choose to hate,
to truly hate,
just as we choose to love,
to really love,
open and willing,
vulnerable,
our hearts beating to the music
behind the fabric of existence.
So choose wisely,
should you hate,
or fumble through life just as we do with love.
It’s nothing to me,
but it’s everything to you:
what you choose to dedicate your heart to.
~Anna Chlewicki Lightfoot~
