I am too difficult to satisfy. I need to remember that the people closest to me are the ones who can hurt me the most, and that I must not be scared of this. I saw Anna today, and remarked to myself that our rift seems to have healed over the past couple of weeks. It is amazing how a disagreement about matters not pertaining at all to a friendship can so damage it, how easily the balloons in which we ride are slashed by emotional daggers, and how we drift and fall, fall and are forget each other in the frenetic effort to bind our own wounds.

attack
sword up
not to draw blood
suddenly smashing wooden tables
stools, utensils clattering
spoons incense sticks
scattered
writhing
aching after the
brutal confrontation
Give in, give in
leave a hole in the defense
bending stem, flowing water,
chewed ego
swallowed without choking

I love emotion. I would not give up that irrationality which allows me to love Mare, despite not having seen her in 18 months. I delight in making decisions that don't make sense. But even as I embrace it, I fear it. Emotion is a strange entity embedded in the folds of reason, driving it as mitochondria drive cells, wielding ultimate authority. If reason is founded upon emotion, is there such thing as reason? Love can disappear in a moment, faith can be shattered in a day, and yet hope can exist even when there seems to be none. We are not reasoning beings - we are feeling beings.

rang out with a long
forgotten trembling
how to embrace the sound
every last syllable?
sieve of buried bicycle rides
lets it fall through
through
through
pit of longing love

Hypocrite that I am, I write that I have no expectations because I don't want to put pressure on Mare, but here I am hoping and hoping that I get a call from her, or a message, some indication that she has read my declaration and can assuage my uncertainty. How much of my turmoil is real? I asked myself, what if I saw Mare on the street? How would I react? Would I be able to express my feelings for her on the spot? Or would I restrain myself, afraid she would not accept me? And suddenly doubts shoot up among hopes so recently revived. Is there even any hope for us, across these distances? Does she think my love is ridiculous, that it can't be real? I feel like I don't know anything anymore. I loved Mare a year ago, but in the year since something has slowly ebbed away from my certainty of that love. I used to know why I loved her, used to remind myself of all those reasons every day. I am sure of the love I had then. But those same reasons don't seem to justify the same emotional intensity now. They are so far in the past, they have thirsted for reaffirmation but received little. It seems somehow wrong to treat them as if they stand as solidly as they did then. But I want to believe I still love her. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Somehow, I am once again prepared to wait for her, I trust my eager desire to return to love. Mare, beautiful Mare, I can only hope for you, hope for ideals which, though being impossible, I insist on treating as certainties. I make no sense; I love.