When i said love was a fishhook I didn’t mean to be subversive and I didn’t mean to be dark – i meant that when my parents hear that one choir anthem, the one that played at their wedding, there’s the tug of a line, a snare that runs through the pair of them and keeps them captured. lovers. i meant that once the barb’s there, it’s no casual visitor – it stays ‘til the end. i haven’t bled yet, i’m preserved, unpierced but they say that when someone catches you it makes you heart beat faster as if that little fishhook loops a friendly arm around the pulsating organ and squeezes it closer to your ribcage ‘til it has less air to beat. and did you know that a fishhook doesn’t really damage you  until you try to pull it out? Like an arrow head, actually. So maybe cupid’s bow and them bountiful fishes in that bountiful sea ain’t such clichés after all.