Forget-Me-Not In Broken Couplets: How Love Affects Our Souls

Experiencing love is linked to higher self-esteem, improved immune system, lower blood pressure, and various other health benefits. For many, achieving love is akin to self-actualization: it is the ultimate goal of life and synonymous with true happiness. The desire to attain love can lead to obsession, codependence, and intense fears of rejection. Without love, we feel unworthy. So, what happens when love becomes additive? When a fundamental human faculty is utilized excessively, transforming a healing experience into a damaging one? Is it better to have loved and lost, or better to have never loved at all?

The love a young child has
For a flower

Is unusual, odd, a small distance away
From what is considered true love.

It’s not brotherly love, nor romantic,
But the love for something purely aesthetic.

The desire to pick her, have her be your own
Forever.

The sad truth is that no flower
Lasts; off the root, they barely survive a few weeks.

Not to mention
Forever.

As soon as the flower is plucked,
The drain of its beauty commences.

The child, loving it no more,
Tosses it out with Sunday’s rubbish.

There is something to be said about the life of a flower
Killed out of love, only for the lover

Interests dampened so close to the other’s demise
And proceed onward without a second thought.

The flower might not mind.
I (myself),

I wouldn’t mind. To be loved
And then forgotten

It’s a quote about regret,
Said Tennyson, Alfred,

Living slightly longer just to wilt
Ripening to withering, all on your own.

Out of the two,
Which is the better choice?

E. K. P. Norman is a Bio-Anthro student at Appalachian State University. While she has never considered herself a professional artist of any kind it is a side passion that she continues to share with the world. Along with poetry she has an eclectic taste in the arts with many paintings, sketches, photos, multimedia efforts, and so on. The words she’s always wished to be described as would be a Renaissance (wo)man or a (wo)man of many hats.