How confronting love is
Tormenting in it's insistence
That I am deserving
Undoing my assiduous efforts
Upturning my best laid bricks
Roving over my shadows
That warm and persistent light
If love was not ardent and enduring
If not for it's refuge, I dare trust
I would set it ablaze and all of it's promises
How dare love seek me out of ordinary comforts
Draw up the rages and riots of childhood
Leave me contused by confounding desires
To dredge through stories stifled seeking solace
Or cease to speak, humble love's temerity
I thought if I laid my truth and tragedies
Enshrined at love's feet, love would simply depart
Honor my desires and vindicate it's transience
But love remains, fortified by my fallibility
So I do not venture far, temper my needs
If I unravel in love's hands, I suture my wounds swiftly
To preempt the reasons love may leave
If I can stand with love in spite of myself
Share in the burden of bearing me
Maybe love will stay a little longer
Then, when the opposing forces of life pull us apart
I lean into the quiet, ready myself
In case this time, love has finally left
This is how I have known love to be
Temperamental and conditional
Enrapturing in it's presence
Vanishing when besieged
By expectations of permanence
