They say you’re too young to love him. They don’t know shit.

You drag the cigarette along your lips, the ember burning too close to the filter, tasting the bitterness of your own impatience. Too young? What does that even mean? Love doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t care if you just turned twenty. It doesn’t care if your nails are chipped black and your lipstick is smeared at the edges.

It just is.

You don’t know what you need they say. Like they’ve cracked the code to your soul, like they hold the patent to existence itself.

But what if you don’t need to know? What if you're okay drifting in the space between rebellion and recklessness? Between poetry and punk?

You glance across the dim-lit apartment, the air thick with the smell of rain and the faint echo of some forgotten vinyl spinning in the corner. Lou Reed, again. He plays it because he knows you love it. Because he loves you. Or at least, you think he does.

You think you don’t need me. You think I’m too cold.

He once told you you were like ice. You freeze, baby. You don’t let anyone in. And maybe he’s right. Maybe you don’t know how to be warm. Maybe love feels like a foreign language you never learned to pronounce.

But you still show up. You still sit on his bed with your legs folded beneath you, listening to him strum absentmindedly, cigarette hanging from his lips, eyes somewhere far away. He plays guitar while you hum along, voice low, smoky. You don’t talk much about the things that matter. He lets his fingers do the speaking, and you let your silence fill in the gaps.

"You’re too young to understand," he murmurs once, his calloused fingers pressing into the strings.

You laugh. Understanding is overrated.

But it still stings.