L.O.V.E

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love is giving.
Love is sharing.

But it isn't love when it always comes with a shove.
It isn't love when my heart wears to shreds in your hands.
It isn't love when it comes at the expense of my dignity.
It isn't love when all you seek are your own ways.
It isn't love when our moments of euphoria come only at the exchange of bodily fluids.

Love me when my body is wrung of its juices and the fingers are too weak to reach and touch.
Love me when I fail to see your view and your own shoes feel too itchy for my feet.

Let there be euphoria in a hug, in a walk, in a kiss as light as feather, when you lay me down and I sleep like a child, sated at its mother's breast.
Let there be love in your acts of kindness - in the opening of doors, the pulling out of chairs, in that gentle inquiry, "what would you rather have?"

Love is the contended look in your eyes after moments of talk with me. Love is the misting over of my eyes, an apt response as I watch the rise and fall of your chest as you sleep, and I know that only I hold privy to your solitary moments.

Love is when you speak to me thus
Hold me thus
Treat thus
And it feels right
And I feel wanted.

Love comes in gentle strides, not in the quick dashes of sprinters; it is when I sit at your river banks and I dally my feet in your waters, without drowning myself in you. Love is in deep breathings of the aged, and not just in the pantings of exhausted lovers.

Love is staking my life on this truth, that the hands that hold me tonight would be there tomorrow.