The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

I’ve always been wary of love, you see. Its promises are too dizzy, its reasons too vague, its origins murkier than mud.”

If you live long enough and well enough to know love, its various permutations and shades, you will falter. You will break someone’s heart. Fairy tales don’t tell you that. Poetry doesn’t either.”

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.