PAD 14

An address to love

I love you, love.
Transformed in your gaze,
in your arms,
to pulsing flesh, electric and warm,
magically beautiful
my skin my home and yours.
My eyes see only bliss.
My heart turns and
longs only to give.
I love you love,
you make me strong,
able to carry, and labor
and tend,
and rejoice that I do.
I hate you, love.
You leave me too open,
nerve endings so alive,
your pain eclipses all.
Skin thinned to where
there is nothing I can hide.
So weak I must be held up
by you.
You leave me raw, love,
and I hate it.
I want to close this
beating heart,
be invisible
in this monstrous world,
but I can't.
You changed me, love,
and without you,
I am not me.

Today's PAD prompt was love. I most emphatically did not want to write a love poem, but I do want to complete this challenge. I could not and would not write another love poem, though. In many ways, the grief poems have been some of the purest love poems I've written about a person. This one though is not about a person. It's about love itself. There have been times when shutting down my heart seemed the smartest thing I could do, but luckily, I was smart enough to learn that the cost would be too high.