… nature versus nurture—innately born or (in)advertently made to be the person that you are; the basis of most issues riddling discussion boards world-wide.  The scientists are scrambling to prove that despite the complexity, the inner workings of the world are quite simple and the activists are well aware of their amendment rights, manipulating words and emotions to prove a point.

The list of arguments that kick start from this preliminary concern of born or influenced goes on and on but there are more still that are simply black and white. Either you’re born being and knowing or you have to learn how.

Love is on the nurture side of the spectrum. How to love and be loved must be learned, practiced, perfected. Love, in all of its sensations, is reciprocal and the ability to do so is oftentimes contingent on the love we receive and witness.  It may not be mirrored exactly, but there will be a direct correlation.

I’ve been the girl in this piece more than a few times in my life and in a world of different capacities. I haven’t necessarily lived this story but, often enough, I’ve been stripped of love and afforded love, in different degrees than I felt was deserved, to know that the effect is all in the same …

Party Girl

Her mother left

just around the time when the boys started knocking

when her hips began to spread

and her lips begged to be kissed

She would dance with boys at parties

trying to stay in rhythm

as their boyhoods pressed against her

feeling something like security

She never noticed the walls they leveraged their backs on

She would get lost in the moment

The bass shook any fears she ever had

and the heat

the heat made it seem

like everyone was having a good time

Those basements were the only places in the world that mattered

And the music brought them all together

made their problems

melt into the floor they danced on

filling the cracks

with confusion and anger

They danced

waiting for a fight to break out or the DJ’s last call

whichever came first

No matter the cause of the party’s end

she would wrangle her conquest for the night

and she’d fuck until it felt like love

because at the end of the day

that’s all she was ever really looking for

the only thing that was ever really missing