My love was never a still thing.
It’s not positioned beneath glass,
with flaws frozen in time,
and gestures affixed to the frame.
The wings of my love are spread and speared,
but not for seeing flight,
nor mistaking stillness for closeness.
The body of my love twitches.
It curls into corners when the light is too much.
It molts without warning, hides in the dark,
and surfaces in strange weather and stranger colors.
My love is movement.
My love is momentum.
My love is forget-me-not forgotten.
My love is memory.
My love makes room for leaving and returning,
for unfurled proboscis and antennae.
My love abides by square-cube law.
It may seem small,
but it can lift 850 times its own body weight.
My love is chrysalis, ever evolving, yet forever unchanged.
And parts that seem unfamiliar will eventually be the same.
My love should breathe.
My love should shift.
My love should scurry, scuttle, stretch, and shiver
without fear of being preserved for observation.
My love is not a specimen pinned down for display.
My love is not a possession,
nor is it a gift to be unwrapped
and placed upon a shelf like a trophy
Because my love is not a reward for a job well done.
My love is not a beautiful thing
held still long enough to dissect.
But my love is a beautiful thing to behold,
and to be held by.
My love is living.
My love is wild.
My love is a bleeding heart in full bloom.
My love is precise.
My love will never forget where it came from.
My love is to touch you in the places
where you’ll be captivated,
but not captured,
because my love is freedom.
And like a dream,
my love can vanish,
at any time,
for any reason,
without a word spoken.
My love is reverie.
So if you find my love,
know that it stayed,
simply because it chose to.