I heard it said the opposite of love
is apathy, not hate

that hate is almost just another kind of love

is that the way it works? if so
it’s been a lot of years since I felt hate.

but there are things I claim to hate:
the centipede, the stewed tomato and the cigarette
is hate the word for these?

Analysis. Subcategories of the feelings I call hate:
there are three parts, at least.

First the motivation: what do I want to happen?
how do I want my hate expressed? On this specific axis,

The cigarette I absolutely would erase
from all existence if I could,
though I have accepted the impossibility.

The centipede, in contrast?
I hate it in perhaps the same way that the centipede hates me.

I do not want to see it. Not in the laundry room,
not in a cage behind a wall of glass,
not even in the cage of disconnected time and space
behind the wall of glass that is a television screen

where there is not the slightest chance
the centipede could hurt me
(and does that mean it also can’t be fear, not really?)
in any case I still don’t want to see it.

out of my sight the centipede can live its life
the way it wants, I certainly don’t mind.
I’ll never hunt it down to wipe its species from the earth
I honor it and I’ll defend its habitat from harm
as long as I can do it from a distance.
is this hatred? I don’t know

I similarly hate the stewed tomato
which I can’t imagine wanting to destroy,
to purge it from the world, to demonize the humans who enjoy it
to pass an anti-stewed-tomato bill through Congress
…no, that is nowhere near my motivation.

the stewed tomato I don’t want to see, or taste, or feel
although I know it couldn’t cause me harm beyond a bit of gagging,
at the sight or taste or texture
so this also isn’t really fear.
I think it earns the name disgust–

although the feeling others call disgust
comes often with a different motivation,
the one I never feel, the one that wants to purge and demonize
and make illegal solely on the basis of disgust

so is my feeling not disgust? or is that other feeling really hatred?
Words are in the mouth and ear of the beholder. I don’t know.

Second axis of the meaning of what hating something is:
what do I believe is wrong with it?
what do I think that it could do to me, to others?

The cigarette could burn my throat and rot my lungs
from simply being near it, while it does the same a thousandfold
to the addict who, while poisoning me, still suffers.
This should be the truest form of fear.
But is it?

the stewed tomato, I am sure it couldn’t hurt me.
nor can the fact of its existence harm the world I know and love, in any way.
I gag but I am not allergic. I avoid it solely for the sake of comfort.

The centipede I think may bite
and yet I feel aversion even when it couldn’t bite me,
behind the glass or in a picture set apart in space and time.
…this can’t be fear, not in the way the centipede fears me.

what is the difference? Maybe axis number three:

where do I feel it?
does the feeling, the emotion, find a place to settle in my body
to become a ‘feeling’ in the other sense, sensation?

I hate the stewed tomato with my throat and upper stomach,
the cigarette the same,
and the centipede with prickles of the skin and palpitations of the heart.

so, is this the line dividing fear, disgust and hatred?
I don’t know

(and I’m not even sure if 'knowing’
is a thing that I can do with this,
because the meanings of the words we use
are far more felt than known)

The people who have hurt me,
if I can say I hate them, it’s a hatred both akin and alien to these.

those, anyway, whom I have not forgiven for the hurt
(and what’s forgiveness? that’s a topic for another poem)

those whom I’ve separated from my life
I’ve done it with a similar and surgical precision
to the excision of the centipede and stewed tomato

an arrangement of the plans and daily chores of life
to piece my life out in a way that never overlaps with them.

what is my motivation? I do not want to see them.
I do not want revenge, that would require seeing them
it would require a connection of my life with theirs, for hours, minutes, milliseconds
or some expanse of time and space
and why in all the planes of all existence would I want that?

and if I do, on some plane, wish that they would stop existing
it is on the level of the cigarette,
a disconnected fear if I can call it fear at all

although I should have reasons set in muscle memory
for why I hate, and what specific harm they’d do
the harm I know they did to me and will continue doing
if I, or other people, should connect my life to theirs
for hours, minutes, milliseconds–

it should be visceral, like how my heart grows legs to flee the centipede
that couldn’t even bite me.

but it’s not.

where in the body do I feel it? I don’t think I do.

whatever part of me was hurt by people,
it no longer has a counterpart in flesh

it’s been excised
in surgical precision far beyond
what happened to the centipede and stewed tomato

or maybe it’s been buried in the bottom of my lungs
like something long ago inhaled from someone’s cigarette

too deep to feel
but not too deep to grow.