I believe in hate. Yes, I believe in hate. More specifically hatred for love. The loathing and disgust and spitting on of love. Love is infinite, prodding, pinching, stabbing heartbreak. So, I believe in hate.
   

I believe in hate. I believe hard, glossy looks are easier if they do not bear purpose. Hard, glossy looks with purpose have carried immense pain still deeply entrenched in the depths of my pupils. I believe in waking up numb. Only because I like it better than gaining back consciousness to find love raiding my carcass for the remains of my diminishing warmth. Hate is a sharp, crisp breeze. It’s waiting and waiting and waiting on broken, one-sided seesaws and still swing sets for her toaster-shaped car several hours past my disregarded curfew. Love is shakily identifying the obsidian kitchen appliance outside the party’s window at 1 AM, dropping her off as she ejects herself from the vehicle warily like burnt toast. It is seeing his content face speed off underneath the dimmed street lights while I feel myself internally collapsing in utter anguish. So I believe in hate. Hate is the frozen yogurt down the street, so frigid it causes my insides to be paralyzed and my teeth to violently chatter. Love is her messily homemade mac and cheese served with an annoyingly perfect spoon and a smile permanently defacing an entire wall of my skull. Hate is blank walls. It is a serene solitude in my head. I knew the feeling when words no longer struck my heart. When I became desensitized to the intensity of emotion and nothing was intricately unpleasant enough to hurt me anymore. Hate is feeling like the world is never endingly muffled while I go about wearing sunglasses, to protect my precious, hard, glossy eyes from damaging rays of sunlight. Love is an amplifier, everything one hundred times louder, blasting the beautiful music we discovered together, projected aimlessly around an empty locker room.

But I believe in hate. Love is overwhelming. It’s dreams I can’t stand to wake from and a single name that resumes my corpse’s sluggish decay. Hate is overwhelming. It’s the rigid crossing of the bones in my arms and legs as if I am trying to lock myself away. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. Love is devastation. It is gingerly handled pictures of trips to California and movie tickets from September 2014 I have stored away safely in a box on my closet’s highest shelf. Hate is devastation. It is the olive green backpack I inherited before she escaped this constant reminiscence of hallways constructed from recollection which I still do not possess the emotional strength to simply throw over my shoulder. It is gazes I promise I’d die to hold forever but am forced to retract from. Love is a clogged throat and quickened pulse a year and a half later. It is a nostalgic, soul-exposing hug momentarily flashing me back to every prod, pinch, stab, and flawed spoonful of mac and cheese. Hate is an amplifier. It echoes withdrawal across my abandoned skeleton. I believe in hate.

Hate is heartbreak. It is the very gradual deterioration of the human heart. So slowly decomposing that is is unnoticeable, until one day I am found to be satisfyingly and irreversibly empty.