I loved you without word, or look or token,
You satisfied a need in me,
I didn’t even know I’d need
A primal urge, instinctive and unspoken.
Then I, so unaware of this devotion,
Was given to your look-alike,
A hateful thing of bile and spite
And learned to loathe your name once it was spoken

Your stand-in was a feeble imitation
My innocent, instinctive need
Became a slave to social greed
Delighting to reveal my limitations
Three times the term of years we were companions
Was I condemned to suffer there
All in your name, my thick despair
Was blamed on you, with careless, gay abandon.

At last, my prison term was deemed completed,
The warden-puppet sent away
Left me to find my lonely way
My hatred for you now as deeply seated
As once, in innocence, I used to need you.
I battled on in hate and fear
And loathed you deeper, every year
Until I found the truth required to free you.

The memories fade of tortures I endured;
Although committed in your name,
I now dismiss the worthless claim
As slander of the worst ever procured
For now I recognise this buried yearning
The joy of rediscovery
And how the truth has set me free,
I hold you in my heart again, sweet Learning

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Prompt: A non-traditional love poem
Form: (Iambic meter, syllable count: 11/8/8/11/11/8/8/11, rhymed abbacddc)