Topic A

You’ve no idea, my love, how much I love you.

   It makes me want to tell you things like this:

“There is no other soul on earth above you,”

   Or, “Heaven’s here on earth each time we kiss.”

The kind of praise a mortal woman will

   Find it hard to live up to, never mind

Believe, for love’s superlatives must kill

   The mundane, and to flaws be ever blind.

And what sane woman wants a man whose eyes

   See the unreal each time they look at her?

Oh, she may swallow one or two sweet lies,

   But when she dines, truth is what she’d prefer.

      That’s why, my love, you’ll always hear me say

      That I adore you for the everyday.

Love is like pain--you must lean into it

   Until the ache becomes a part of you

And warms you from the inside, like a spit

   That roasts your bubbling heart till it cooks through.

Love is the hurt you never want to heal--

   It cuts away the tendons of the life

You walked alone, till each stride makes you feel

   The sweetly moaning torture of the knife.

Love is the gravity of soul to soul--

   It weighs us down to make us light and daring--

It carves us into pieces till we’re whole

   And shattered by the holy ache of caring.

      The healing pain of scalpel slicing true:

      That’s what I feel when I lean into you.

We touch, but skin to skin, not soul to soul--

   Scratching each other to relieve the itch

Of Love’s mosquito bite--digging a hole

   Into a wound that Time will try to stitch

And heal, so we can keep it fresh and raw--

   Searching for what is hidden in the bone,

Love’s marrow; and so, hungrily, we gnaw

   Away at flesh so we won’t feel alone.

But flesh is not the answer: it will feed

   Never the hunger, just the appetite.

To crave and gorge will always leave the need

   Starving for more than something sweet to bite

      Until we make meals of what makes us whole

      And love, not skin to skin, but soul to soul.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells