just desserts in a deserted desert

What’s one thing people can’t live without?

I should say God, for I am quite devout

Though the atheists without God seem to manage alright

Or if I were wry, I could say my eyes

They allow me to see, they allow me to cry

But then, the blind do okay without sight

Well, if I were a wit, I might say my spit,

I need it to swallow and play clarinet

But I know that’s not really what this prompt meant

So I will be clear

What I hold most dear

Is not spit, or an eye, or an ear

It’s the people around me, all seven billion

Whether African, Turkish, Korean, Brazilian

We aren’t like the other creatures, you see?

We have something special, something really unique

Our hearts beating

Our smiles smiling

Every single person has something shared

It lets us feel trust, it makes our souls bare

Sends happiness from our toes to the roots of our hair

Makes dieting people try a bite of éclair

Makes children with legos want to share

Makes a hunter free a rabbit from a snare

Everyone feels something like love!

And that, I truly think the world of

Some skeptics and cynics sincerely doubt it,

But the world cannot survive without it

It brings us friends, pets, lovers, marriage

A baby in a baby’s carriage

Even the birds and squirrels in trees

Cannot resist the birds and the bees

It is intoxicating, inexorable, inexhaustible, and unfathomable

And it is how we make life tolerable

Or even live life at all

Love.