Love does this

Love is a choice, and I have chosen to love you for some time now.

Its a choice for exposure, vulnerability, transparency. Its a choice I continue to make despite your stoicism, distance, indifference towards me.

This choice opens me to pain. Pain that I feel when you seem unwilling to choose me. Pain that I feel when you seek after others looking for exactly the attributes I throw at your feet. Pain that my gift is unwanted, pain that my gift is taken for granted.

This choice opens me to pleasure. Pleasure that I feel at your pride in your accomplishments. The pleasure I feel when you help your children and those in your circle of influence. The pleasure I feel when you finally turn your attention to me, to share a joke, or ask my advice, or just invite me to be with you.

The joy, the warmth, the dangerous opportunity, the trembling of anxiety and anticipation I feel simply being in proximity to you. To soak up the lines around your eyes, the creases in your forhead, the crystal clarity of your deep magic eyes. I long to hold you, caress you, protect you, comfort you, serve you…

…but you do not let me.

You allow yourself to be played by the players with the glitter. You follow the most base leadings despite your own knowledge of the truth and what matters. How deeply my exposure can cut me. But how quickly in truth that I heal.

Love does this.