A Silly Little Poem And Some Big Thoughts On Love.

I can say to a man:

I love your car
I love your place
I love your couch
I love your face

I love your dog
I love how much you love your dog
I love how much your dog loves you

I love your laugh
I love your hair
I love our conversations
I love what you wear

I love the way you challenge my thinking
I love the way you raise one eyebrow and ask, “Oh, really?” when my words are unexpected

I love your smile
I love your work ethic
I love your hedonistic ways
And you know I love your ____

I love that you are honest with me
Even when the truth is hard to hear
I love that you wear expensive suits
But prefer to drink cheap beer

I love sitting on a bar stool
And listening to your stories
I love making you laugh
While hashing over my theories

I love that you’re generous, engaging, and kind
Intense, broody, and dramatically inclined.

I love the way you look at me when you’re aroused
I love the brush of your hand on my hips
I love the way you touch me
I love the taste of your lips

I love how you hold me
As we drift to sleep mid-conversation
I love lying in your arms
Dreaming of the physical sensations

I love your bathrobe and messy hair
Even though I can’t seem to make them rhyme
I love the way you peer over your glasses
As we part until next time…

I can say I love every single thing that pertains to a man, but to say the words, “I love you,” causes hesitancy.

I want to love whom I love, and be free to express it. Loving you doesn’t mean I want to marry you. It doesn’t mean you’re the only one I love, or the last one I’ll love. It doesn’t mean I need to glom my life onto yours, or close the spaces between us. It simply means that I have a great capacity to feel, and this is what I feel for you.

Love.

The world has taught us that we can feel infinite amounts of anger and hate, but love is finite and we must reserve it, and feel it for only a very few.

Or maybe just for “the one.”

That’s a lot of pressure.

“Guard your heart,” they admonish.

Guard against what?
Pain?

What if your heart loves so freely that love not returned by one isn’t painful? What if the fear of pain prevents you from feeling the most beautiful of all emotions? It’s really not so scary once you take away the societally imposed expectations.

I don’t want to reserve love or be guarded. This life is too short, and I might not recognize you in the next, so I want to express it now. I am capable of loving infinitely, and you are one of the people that I am fortunate to know well enough to love.

Don’t be uncomfortable, or hesitant to express it in return, because I have no designs. And if you don’t feel it, or you feel it differently, that’s ok, too. That is the beauty of the human range of emotions. We are all in different places at different times. And right now, in this time and place, I love you. Let it bolster and encourage you. You have great worth in the eyes of another. That is not something that should cause hesitancy.

Ginger Claremohr

Comments