Undermining Love

Undermining Love

It’s amusing how love struggles through ludicrousness,
Through crazed ideas, through inconceivable acts.

Time and time again they have done this to me.
They seem to be conspiring in some kind of scheme of their childhood imagination.

I played with these thoughts while stalking across the grass.
There she was, rolling in the puddle, soaking her sweater in thick mud, and washing her hair with dirt.

I wrapped my fingers around her flimsy arm and yanked her from the muck.
She stared at me with such a forlorn gaze.
Her eyes shined through the mud like small portals into a fantasyland.

Her innocent expression, however, was no match for me.
I scolded her, spanked her, and scolded some more asking why she could not entertain herself with jump ropes and Barbie dolls like her cousins, and I gestured to those perfect angels.

It was then and there I was interrupted by an abrupt splash.
My head throbbed as if they were all stamping their wretched little fight on top of it.
Those “ perfect angels” leapt with such determination into the puddle, splashing, laughing and carrying on their play.

The filthy sprite I still held in my hand gave a mischievous smile and jerked free of my grasp to join her cousins.

I stood in shock, though not complete shock for this had happened before.
Time and time again it had happened. It was inconceivable to me how when one is punished they all must be punished.

What kind of undermining love is this?