Being Love

In the tender clatter of beginnings,
love was an untrained compass,
its needle jittering at every grief-sized magnet.
I mistook its trembling for accusation,
as if the world expected me to decode storms
before I had even learned the language of rain.

Still, those first trials,
the collapsed bridges of trust,
the paper-thin bravery taught me that a heart
does not fail by breaking,
but by refusing to expand afterward.

Mid-life arrived like a city that builds itself overnight,
alleys full of decisions I didn’t remember making,
windows reflecting versions of me I had not yet met.
Love wandered with me through the scaffolding and clamor,
sometimes lost, sometimes luminous,
a lantern flickering in rooms crowded with
obligations, thresholds,
and the hum of unanswered questions.

Through triumphs that felt borrowed
and calamities that felt earned,
I learned that love’s endurance is not a medal or miracle,
but the quiet, stubborn choosing to remain porous
in a world that asks us to armor ourselves.

And then…

A morning small enough to overlook taught me the simplest truth:
love is not a searchlight nor a pilgrimage,
but a way of moving.

To be love…

Is not to seek a chalice or a witness,
but to kneel in the mundane grace of a Tuesday morning,
lift a startled household spider like a tiny bewildered pilgrim,
and return it gently to its wilderness,
the gesture light as forgiveness,
the intention clear as dawn,
a kindness with no audience,
a flame needing no match.