On Love and On Marriage – A Collaboration, Part 2

The piece below is part two in a collaboration between myself and the very gifted poet Thought for Change, of the blog The Rendezvous Club. This piece was written over a period of time through various communications revolving around a Q/A about fear, love, and marriage.

The text on the left was written by Though for Change. The text on the right was written by me.

I have known love
In the movements of
The trees at night
In the light provided
By sun and moon alike
One in the same
But different nonetheless
I have known love
In the kiss of a stranger’s lips
In the warm embrace
Of a kindred soul

Love does not define
Rather
Love embellishes
Bringing forth from life
And into life
Substance from
A stirring that lies beneath
The warmth that resides within
Every heart and hand
Every soul and wayward glance

How I long to know love
How I have searched
The words of so many
For some semblance of
What I cannot quite grasp
With arms or hands
What can only be briefly understood
Deep within

I believe in myths and fairy-tale
I believe that skies are red and
Darkness is green and that
Waves in the ocean are transparent yellow
And just like that I believe in love.
I believe that it exists and
The world condenses to form love.

There have been moments
Years
Lifetimes even
Where love and life spoke as one
Where vows were made and unions formed
Where joy was abundant
And possibility flowed
Both in the waking hours
As well as within
Dreams of so much more

These moments have passed in time
And the nature of memory is such
That shadows form
And light bends around
Areas where pain now resides
Where the laws of equal exchange
No longer govern
And which restless hearts have long abandoned

But hope remains
Each new dawn brings possibility
And hearts heal
In time
Waiting only for
Love to spring forth
Patient in repose
But restless with anticipation

Crossing hands and holding them
Vowing never to part
A silver thread from the heart
Tied a knot around
Bonded by the thread
They walked down the aisle
Expecting this bond to last
For the vows said not to part
But what if the thread is cut
What if the heart that was one
Now separated from the soul
Blind in Love then they was
Now slowly slowly see
Looking slowly slowly inside each other
Now their love turned blind!

I believe that anything is possible
That even legends are steeped in truth
That the sky is boundless and far in the distance there are flames
That the black of the shadows holds tight to every color
And that, laying just beneath the surface of the ocean’s Azure waters
You can look up and see the sun shining through the clear, crystal waves

I believe that words hold power
And as such
Those with the gifts to speak and transcribe them
Wield immense capabilities
To define for themselves
And for those who will listen
What is
And what is not

_

They say love is patient
That it relies not on sight
But on something more
Something deep
Beneath the skin and beneath even the veins and ventricles
That it resides not in the minutes and the hours, the days or the weeks
But in the years

So often
We are quick to make decisions
Thinking them correct and perhaps they are so
But only in the moment they are made
And by the time we have realized how much further they extend
It is too late