I hate the love I feel for you
Not because you don’t deserve it
That much is evident from your prolonged absences
And casual insertions of self
Into the otherwise spacious parentheses of my day
I hate the love I feel for you
Because it’s a sign of my weakness
I’m not talking feminine weakness
The stereotypical pining-after, incessant self-interrogation
(Did I do something wrong? Does
he love me anymore? Am I
worthy of his love? What did I
do to deserve it and
how can I remain deserving?
Have I ever been deserving?
How could he want someone like me,
after all?), and bitter regrets
I’m talking the weakness that turns self against self
Stems the warm flood of passionate questions
Cools the yearning river bed of the soul
Which longs for a soft communion
I’m talking about the weakness that leads me to abandon myself
To accept only the mirror-image version of me
Flat and vapid
Reflected in your eyes that are incapable of seeing
My love is not conditional—it is eternal and unchanging
It is a sigh that emerges from my hollow throat
Destined never to die but to merely find itself
Radiating outward to the lonely reaches of space and time
Until it becomes a whisper
An unfathomable hum always on the verge of perishing
But never quite getting there
Emptiness
Is all around me
My love was once a tether to something real
A golden thread revealing the subtle architecture of an intimate and gentle universe
And then it turned into a sour god
Who banished me to this hell of perpetual distance
To dark mazes of rooms in which I am in constant pursuit
But all I see is the back of your head as you close another door behind you
I hate the love I feel for you
Because it takes me further from me
