I didn't realize what a long stretch had gone by since I posted any poetry. This one was written a couple of months ago and I think it's one of my most honest looks at love, as well as a glimpse into my inner landscape and that of the love of my life.
After nearly fifteen years of figuring it out, I see love a lot differently than I did when we first began, but I'm happy to say that I do not see it through jaded eyes. I equate becoming jaded with growing up, and that's something I will never do.
Love is too beautiful to see it through "realistic" eyes, and it's too eternally youthful to ever let it get old.
I hope you enjoy this poem...
* * *
Eye to Eye: This Love is Greater
I conceptualized a lover.
Someone unselfish, without conditions.
And someone who would put
no limits on love,
no limits on giving,
but sharp limits on the pain
that the outside world
would be allowed
to impose on me.
Someone who would enforce those boundaries,
who would protect me from the frightening things
that I decided were my enemies.
It wouldn't matter if I made sense.
It wouldn't matter if those things
would never really hurt me.
It would only matter that I believed they could,
and you would slay what I saw as dragons
even if they were created in my imagination.
I've come to accept,
grudgingly,
emptily,
that you will not be
that knight for me.
You'll only unsheath your sword
if and when I can prove
that the dragon exists,
that it's after me,
and that the fire it breathes
can really scorch my reality.
It doesn't matter to you
if the flames only singe my dreams.
You believe I should be stronger against these things.
And still I love you.
I respect your groundedness.
I suspect that your reality
is less tangible than my fantasy,
but I believe one day we'll see eye to eye.
I'll understand the laws of the land
and you'll comprehend the power of the mind.
Until then we'll reside in the interim,
in love's shadowy twilight,
somewhere between the lines,
and in those wrinkles etched in time.
You cannot be the vision I gave birth to.
I cannot be the person you'd like me to.
But would you mind if I stayed anyway?
Would you mind if I chose you
above all the others,
even above the fabled hero
who only exists in fairytales?
Because to me, this love is greater.
It is real. It hurts because it's alive.
We argue our positions because we care,
and because we matter to each other.
And we may be so stubborn,
we may guard our opinions
with knives and guns and greed,
with jousts and swords and steeds,
but we're willing to die
for love,
aren't we?
