And the problem here is: I don't know if I love you anymore...

Because I've loved you,

(oh gods how I've loved you)

and it's hurt.

A sea of grief has been cried through tightly clenched eyes;

my heart has run itself ragged

--breaking in half and speeding up--

all at the sight of you.
Love should not hurt, but a love in which I could not love you:

I carved out a hole in my being,

and the cauterized edges of my soul

throbbed in an agonizing symphony--

so great was the pain.
I've been dying since the day I loved you

and living at the thought of you.

But now I'm just alive.

Is it so easy to love, that in loving you I still remain myself?

Can a love be quiet and gentle--

the lapping of the lake against the shore--

the sunrise hours of a silent dawn?

Does a love need be reciprocated to justify contentedness?

Perhaps it's that the Herculean love of youth fades to a quiet promise

once the spinning of the earth quickens its pace.
In growing up: love requires no exchange

to be a form of peace...
I do not need to shape my body around yours--

to make a half of myself and be left wanting,

wanting,

when you don't align to make me whole.

And then it no longer becomes a question

of if I love you; but rather, how?

 

And perhaps it's true that I don't love you--

not at least the way I did.

I wanted you, and I wanted you to love me,

and I wanted to burn the whole world down around us--

to show you how I felt, everyday.

I loved you in quiet victories, and deafening pretenses,

and the way it felt to be seen as two.

Now I see you: through lenses uncolored by floral hues,

and a love that rests in the strength of my pride,

and the measure of your growth.

I love you now, in fading watercolor skies,

and rubber wheels against bleeding asphalt.

I love you in the coconut aftertaste of July afternoons,

and I do not need your love to love you.

Nor your promises--

your hoarded minutes.

I do not need your ears to listen, your eyes to watch me,

your lips to press to mine.

I do not need the smoke of the world

to strangle your lungs, to justify myself.


If you exist, then I'm in love, and you require

no explanation.

So neither then does my love.