Camouflaged Love

At the end of so many sentences,

I hear you pause,

Your lips purse,

It’s almost like an act of pittance,

As you say, once again, aggravating as always though I know it’s true,

“Because I love you.”

So many times, I’ve heard these words pass your lips,

Makes me want to hug you and hurt you

All at the same time.

That classic unheeded, somewhat unneeded advice you, my mother, always seem to give.

Though I know you mean well.

I hear again,

This time from a younger yet older soul,

My sister, my own Gemini.

Her words, I take more in stride, yet still sometimes,

The same spark of frustration lights up my eyes.

For when she says you shouldn’t take that class, it’ll be hard,

And I say, maybe so, but I still need it,

And she says I don’t hear her voice, that her words are unheeded,

Yet I argue, say I disagree, for I hear her, loud and clear.

For it’s not that I don’t understand, and that her advice is not needed,

For I am grateful, for I know she means well.

It’s just my own angry I feel, my rage at myself.

That I can’t be who I want.

That she feels too, that I can’t be who I ought.

For love always comes with unspoken, unbroken deals,

And the words when I asked her why, why this advice,

Always lie right behind,

There in it is waiting fields.

Because “I love you” rings in my ears,

I hear it again.

But though I am angered much still, another fire lights too.
That of the spark in the center of my heart, the torch that flames for her, too.

It’s the one that leads to my own separate utter,

My own unneeded opinions.

Leading to sign, as if her frustrations are now at a billion.

For when I remind her when she is anger,

That there is always hope in this world.

And she looks at me enraged, thinking, I’m sure, that I’m some naïve, little girl.

But I’m just trying to bring some positive light to her world.

Or when my friend reads the stories that I’ve written,

And praises them, it’s like a gift being given.

One without ribbons, or bows, but with a secret hidden message,

So small, but so true.

I read them, she says though her act,

“Because I love you.”

For these small acts and words that I am grateful,

Though they sometimes may make me gripe and grit my teeth.

For I know that whatever the words said, the acts done, the reasoning behind them is the same, always true,

Every syllable, every motion, is “because I love you.”