This is How Love Is

Defiant,
Love swims Upstream
Like those silly, stubborn salmon
In the summer and spring
Advancing against Gravity
And Anything Else
Which has the misguided gall to say
We’re going in the Wrong Direction.

Intransigent,
Love argues
(Vociferously at times)
For what It knows is Right and True for Us,
Against a Pedantic Notion of Love
Which Others seem to Know
Is both Good and Perfect
For Someone Else.

Undomesticated,
Love is an Animal
We find Wounded in the woods
Ready to Lick Tenderly at our cheeks
Or swallow us whole in its Voracious Maw.
This is the One
We Gather Up in blankets
And take Home to Our Children.

Unquenchable,
Love drinks, and drinks,
And Drinks Some More
A Thirsty Mastiff Lapping
Sloppily at its bowl
Stopping only to look at us with
Pleading Eyes
When the bottom is licked dry.

Unrestrainable,
Love pulls endlessly at The Leash
Until the leather Gives Way
With a Satisfying Snap
And we Run, Joyously Free, Forward,
Always, Only, Forward.
Never looking Back to see
Who might be coming after Us.

Incandescent,
Love emits a Golden Light
From heat Formed in blackness
By Clandestine Friction
Where only Cold Darkness
Had previously held sway
Lighting a Path for us
And for those who Dream of Love like Ours.

Love is not what Others dream For Us;
Love is the Dream Itself.

Love is not what Anyone thinks it Should Be;
Love leaves the Thinking to Others.

Love is what we both Grasp At and Run From.

This is Futility, Indeed.

For in the end,
Love Runs to Us,
Grasps Us,
And Refuses to Ever let Us go.

This is Not How Love Should Be.

This is How Love Is.

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On the Occasion of Dawn & Janell’s Marriage
March 13, 2022