ᵀʰᵉ ᴰᵉᵃᵗʰ ᴼᶠ ᴹᵉ

My mother always warned me against playing with dangerous things-fire, drugs... love. She'd say it with a sternness that let me know she'd seen firsthand what those things could do to a person. But I was never one to listen blindly. I always wanted to see for myself, to feel the burn, to taste the danger, even if it was only once.
"Mi tell yuh, wah sweet nanny goat a guh run him belly," she'd say, eyebrows raised and finger pointing, reminding me that sometimes the sweetest things come with a price you don't want to pay. But curiosity has a way of twisting the mind, making you think you can handle what others couldn't, that somehow the fire would feel different, that the flame wouldn't burn quite as deep.
So I stepped into love, heart first, thinking I could hold on to just the sweet without tasting the bitter. But love-it's the trickiest one of all.