A Meditation on Love, In Six Parts

i. walls

There is my love, defiant of description. 

There is my loneliness, a wall of thorns.

I cannot trust what I tell you.

There you stand, across the chasm.

I burn every bridge for the light of understanding.

I am only what I have shown you. 

There are the others. They can never know us.

Before me, solace, behind me, confusion.

All around me, confusion. 

I don't know what I am, I can't say what I am. I can't say what we are.

ii. knowledge 

The eternal fallacy: to name something is to know it. 

Give me a name and you alone will understand me. I will become your understanding of me.

We will become our understanding of ourselves. 

Give me a bowl to fill with the contents of my heart, and I will return it to you, brimming with your love and knowledge of me. 

Independence is impossible, I am a reflection.

I will reflect you as you reflect me.

iii. oppression

Even now the thorns wrap around my heart. 

They keep me from you. They whisper in my ears and stop my thoughts even after I have burnt their branches and anointed myself with the ash. 

They tell me: You are nothing but a possession of those you love most deeply.

I answer: You may be right, but why should that mean that I am nothing?

I have come to know these things to be true:

One, all I have ever wanted is to be loved as I am. Two, the world has marked me as someone to be hurt. Three, I should not have to be hurt to be loved.

iv. commitment 

Be kind to me, in my weakness.

I will become stronger in time, but my strength, too, will be yours. 

Do not shy from this. Do not look away, scared as you may be to accept all that I can give.

I give you my hand, though it trembles.

I give you my heart, though it pounds.

I give myself to you, like a deer frozen in headlights gives itself to the traffic. Be kind to me.

I want nothing more than to be seen as whole even when I know I'm not.

I look to you and I see all that I hold dear. I am not supposed to love like this. No one is supposed to love like this.

I don't know how to love any other way.

v. paranoia 

There is my torch, quenched by the falling rain.

There is my shelter, locked from the outside. 

Too many bridges have been burnt to allow the fire to remain uncontained. 

I trust no one, and so I trust you with everything.

vi. selfishness

Even now the thorns wrap around my heart. Is it safe to cut them away? 

My hands are clumsy and unfit for such delicate work, but I will make them as steady as my belief in you.

I want to be your religion, as you are mine.

Is that selfish?

for I am divided for love's sake

Is it wrong to desire such things?

for the chance of union

If it is not, adore me as I adore you.

this is the creation of the world

Take me into your arms, speak my praises as I speak yours. 

that the pain of division is as nothing

Blur the walls between us until two have become one.

and the joy of dissolution, all.

And if it is wrong to want this, forgive me.