Love doesn’t hurt; it can’t.

It’s raging storms between oceans, it’s silent droplets subtly silhouetting sea shells, it’s the waves’ surrender of rolling in before their return.

A force of might that will at times push each of us forwards, or backwards, and maybe both.

Water so vast has always terrified me: whether or not I allowed my being to swim or let itself float, the constant dread of drowning kept me at shallow depths.

My dread and terror isn’t isolated, not in the slightest. I see it in the eyes of deep divers, in the mouths of smooth surfers, and the hands held around opened umbrellas.

You saw the fluid in me, I poured my purest in you. You froze my fingertips into ice, I thawed your frost to warmer hue.

You were the high tide pulled by the soft moonlight deserting me on this island.

I was a cascade that crashed your gate, the ebb that exposed a new path.

Love doesn’t hurt; it can’t.

Rejection does, abandonment does, betrayal does.

We’ve met those who spoke of profound encounters with the deep-bodied, when in reality, they had merely walked the shore-line.

Washed up waves had met their ankles, surely – yet only one foot in at a time, the other out – how cleverly sly.

Affection and trust, devotion and lust, these are tokens we deal, sensations to accept, to nibble or feast. They are acts and choices to connect with the ocean of love. But you, too, know this very well: they are not love in itself.

I created a tsunami for myself, yet protested when it hit, then gave my shards the colour blue. Went in search for a ship, I climbed the first boat: that boat was you.

Shipwreck, wind cleared. May we swim again.

While pain still leaks through my tears and breath, what I’ll keep is the initial love –
the one that’s equal to courage and had me pick up this pen.