That Love

Does love feel like sand falling between your fingers? 

Holding so tight but always knowing it will inevitably slip away?

Tears spill as you feel the divide when they are away;

The separation like pressure in your chest,

Nerves are like steel bending,

Heart hammering like a thunderous beat

And a desperate need to have them oh so close. 

Eyes lighted when turned towards their face, 

Feeling a need, a desire to give and let them know

In their bones that you need them. 

Don't turn away - you become greedy for their attention.

Feeling starved, locked out and removed. 

Like a breach I am trying to reach across. 

A separate person who won't open up everything,

As I open up all my desperation, all my broken parts

But my resilience and true fire dissolved. 

Here to give, and here to please,

To give the huge weight of love I have in my artist's heart. 

But all the time knowing I am not going to be worthy,

For I see the preciousness in you.

The perfection in your imperfect humanity. 

The reality that tears at my own flesh. 

And when your words become poison

Or when your actions crush - 

The rage is harboured, settled and swallowed

Because of my love for you. 

My own bile starts to blacken my spirit.

My vision splinters but I cannot shake that view I hold. 

Devoted and branded by a metal ring.

But also bonded through blood and life. 

Knowing that I would shatter myself to keep you free from glass. 

But still you get hit by the shards,

Until you smash me into a hundred pieces. 

Someone please tell me -

Is this what love is? 

How love should be?

If so - I never want it again.