Analogy of Love

      I go to Kentucky State University. I am originally from Portsmouth, Virginia, but I moved to Washington, DC when I was about eleven or twelve. So when I refer to home, I am usually talking about DC. I am home for my summer break, and due to regentrification, there are a lot of buildings being torn down and a lot of buildings being built.
      There's one  buildingin particular on the corner of Southern Avenue and East Capitol St. in SE that I want to talk about. This building was recently torn down. It looked as if it was built in the 1960s or 1970s. It is about five or six stories high. In it's hay day I'm sure it was a place of hustle and bustle as there looked to be shops at the bottom, or at least at one time there was, not to mention it is across the street from Capitol Heights Metro Station. After a few years of being the center of hustle and bustle, it seems as if no one took care of it, and it probably became run down and dilapidated. The business probably scattered and the people left there probably hated it. This probably happened during the crack epidemic of the 80s and then the rise of gangs in the 90s. By the time I saw the building, it was completely dilapidated and abandoned, a shell of what it once was. Gang signs spray painted in red on the dirty white concrete walls, windows busted out, leaving the inside open to the elements, but from the outside we only see darkness. Now they have torn that building down. In it's place is a nice size field of green grass. Only the memory of the building remains, in fact, if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not believe it ever stood. It's now closer to a figment of my imagination than any tangible place.
      When I think of this building, interestingly enough, I think of love. Love is something that starts off beautiful, hustling, bustling, and full of life. Then if not taken care of, it becomes run down. Interestingly enough, like the building, love becomes run down when addiction sets in. Some kind of violence usually sets in afterwards. Eventually, love becomes just a shell of what it used to be.  When love gets to that point the only way make it better is to tear down what existed and start with fresh green grass. Hopefully after one tears down their building of concrete love, they learn that love cannot be built, but it must be grown, and they grow something on the fresh green grass.  The pain that existed within those concrete walls of love then comes crumbling down with the building and exists only as a memory. Only as a lesson lived.