Dear God of Online Dating
You discount cupid.
False Aphrodite.

We come to you
romance weary
washed up
on the shores of Lonesome.

I come to you because of the way
eyeballs are connected to heartbeats
that make my flazingas all zipshittered
and I have trouble with real words
so my tongue just flaps stupid inside
its moist tooth cave.

Dear God of Online Dating
We are the half-truth saints of swiping.
We are all funny
and so positive!
We all use too many exclamation points.
We are all a little bit shorter than we claim to be.
We are all very oudoorsy.
We all do yoga in very peculiar places.

Dear God of Online Dating,
my current profile reads:

My profile says I’m 32 but I’m actually 32. Not here for hook ups. I’m kind of tall if you’re extremely short. I don’t trust hiccups. I am the 2001 Ford Taurus of boyfriends: I’m sensible, reliable, and gently used.

I haven’t matched with anyone for weeks, dear God of Online Dating, and I can’t understand why.
Love, I’m afraid, is more complicated than an algorithm.
I don’t even know what an algorithm is.
Even on my best days, I barely have any rhythm at all.

Dear God of Online Dating,
You have brought upon me
gallons of awkward coffee,
hundreds in bar tabs,
and more than a couple of questionable mornings.

Dear God of Online Dating
No one wants to know
about our dark.
How many times we
contemplated a bare bodkin
and quote Shakespeare
Nobody wants to know
what it was that got us to this age
without stable companionship.

Also, no one wants to know about the time in college when I dropped acid and butt-chugged an entire bottle of wine, drove immediately to the emergency room where in a frenzy I leapt from my hospital bed and ran up and down the hallways proclaiming salvation while trying to start another small fire in the waiting room.

That’s more of a second or third-date story.

Dear God of Online Dating
I just want to know if I’m tolerable enough for a conversation.
I want to swipe right and feel the brief momentary exhilaration
of matching with someone
even if they don’t respond to my dad jokes or ghost facts.
I just want to be held in someone’s digital arms
and cuddle with their code.
We’re in too much of a hurry to look into each other’s eye
and take the risk of saying “I love you on an analog level.”

Dear God of Online Dating
this isn’t the first time I’ve prayed to you.
I’ve deleted you before,
and goddamn it,
I’ll delete you again
and again,

Amen.

 

Image from Huffington Post

 

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