The Price of Love

How much I was nestled in ignorance,

Before the rays of the sun pried open my heart!

Easy in lack I was.

Numb like the nut in shell before the hammer.

Then love,

Like a blow,

Spilled me onto the table to be examined for my sweetness.

Not painful, no, but shattering.

This is the price of love.

And oh how like the faun on too thin legs

My understanding of hearts

Toppled in happy clumsiness!

Wide-eyed delight

Assuming too much and too little,

Innocent joy a fountain of soap bubbles

All waiting to sting.

They burst,

A tiny spray

Of moisture in my eyes.

This is the price of love.

But love grows bigger than the pot,

And soon my heart must find itself larger.

For love collects wonders and stuffs them

Into my breast already crammed full of the beauty of you.

More you become,

And inside I ache with holding it all,

And I pay happily

The cost of all this love;

This pain of stretching

Until I must surely come apart.

Ah, the price of love.

It is too good, says my soul.

My wavering heart cries out with dark doubt.

Oh foolish minx,

Why do you look and look for stones?

Now I examine myself for anything less,

I become a frown,

I drive fears underneath my own nails

And stare sideways

At you

And me

Wondering why.

And I suffer the price of love.

Remarkable and common,

Love costs so much more than this.

Exacting payment in flesh,

In drops of life,

In hours and days.

Most coveted chalice,

Once sipped from replacing all other grails.

The blackest cherry,

Love gives the sweetest juice.

We drank from it together and became saturated with its red stain.

Every day lover,

My heart bleeds its cherry wine for you,

And my nostrils flare at the hint of it.

My body, the slave of my dedication, throbs its wants.

Love has cheapened all its rivals.

It swarms in me and makes me deaf.

Like a clockwork

My mind places you at its center,

And the day must go through its paces after.

Hungry,

With pangs for you

I starve.

This is the price of love.

But when we lie together,

So that our bodies can feel enough,

And our minds share their affinity,

The account is open.

You pour in

And I pour in

Countless ministrations,

Offerings of devotion,

Giving of heart and body and soul,

The price of love

Without counting the cost.

From Lottie Aug 2011