Love

Love


I wasn’t raised with love.
It is not a sentiment I am familiar with.
Unless you mean a synonym for sex,
making love, what does that mean?
Noble emotion that might involve
self-sacrifice, or even beautiful adoration,
smiling eyes of grateful awe for that beloved,
these are acts of fiction, lying artists
creating with smoke and splendor.
I have felt attractions, not physical
in the common sense, not love in the sense
of lust, but an essence pulled out from me,
an existential urge to touch, not in the
common physical sense.
I feel an importance of that person,
a lingering in my thoughts,
a presence beyond their immediate form
before me.
It is not that I want them to notice me,
or that I even want to notice them.
It is not this love I read of or hear cried
over in popular songs.
It is more like curiosity, a desire
to know more.
It is harmless.  Just one more temporary
amusement, idle reflection to pass time.
It passes.
They pass.
People pass from view, from time, into
the vast enormity of then.
It is good not to be attached to a phantom
emotion, dependent on fragile ephemerality.
I read somewhere, and was impressed enough
to remember, that real Love, not the euphemism,
or the phantom longing, is made up of
attraction, attachment, and attunement.
All those ats.
I like the stories where true love heals all,
breaks all curses.  Who wouldn’t?
That’s why stories sell.
Love will never bring me alive.
Not by any definition.
I like to think that somewhere there are children
who are loved, really loved – all the ats --
just for being in the lives brought alive
by their being together, lives brought alive
in a place of loving regard.
That’s why fantasy sells.