Love.
It is not a chain.
It is a widening.
A room within the chest becomes inhabitable,
and even absence learns to breathe there.
Its joy is never innocent of wound.
It burns, but not to destroy —
it burns so that hidden things
will finally admit their names.
Beauty is no longer a public fact.
It becomes whatever the heart cannot turn away from.
We offer it our little store of hopes, our unfinished selves,
and call that offering enough.
Sometimes it is returned in full.
Sometimes one soul keeps the watch for two.
Still, something in us chooses generosity over pride,
and calls that choice devotion.
Against time, against loss, against the fixed machinery of the world,
love makes its small impossible resistance.
And if it cannot remain forever,
it leaves the days changed after it has gone.