The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

Our mother taught us how to protect ourselves from hurt but not how to determine what might be worth the risk.

“The love of your life is always the one you have betrayed the most. The love that defines you is the one upon whom you once turned your back.”

Some days continue to exist year after year, decade after decade, as though they are happening inside you concurrent with the present. A persistent, simultaneous life. One that you consider and wish more than anything that you could change. I

questions. I believe now that certain events are inevitable. Not in a fateful way, for I have never had faith in anything but myself, but in the way of human nature. Some people will choose, again and again, to destroy what it is they value most. This is how I saw my brother. This

What I wanted to say to this man was that the greatest works of poetry, what make each of us a poet, are the stories we tell about ourselves.

We create them out of family and blood and friends and love and hate and what we’ve read and watched and witnessed. Longing and regret, illness, broken bones, broken hearts, achievements, money won and lost, palm readings and visions. We tell these stories until we believe them, we believe in ourselves, and that is the most powerful thing of all. But

was wrong to tell you that this is a story about the failures of love. No, it is about real love, true love. Imperfect, wretched, weak love. No fairy tales, no poetry. It is about the negotiations we undertake with ourselves in the name of love. Every day we struggle to decide what to give away and what to keep, but every day we make that calculation and we live with the results. This then is the true lesson: there is nothing romantic about love. Only the most naïve believe it will save them. Only the hardiest of us will survive it.