conversation prompt

The answers to questions about love
are different for everyone. They are drawn
and built in early childhood, family
interactions, ideas gleaned from movies,
storybooks. From adults you see “in love”
as a child, providing good
and bad models.

They burst into evolution in wild development

into and through early experience
with love - daring failures, mostly
spectacular embarrassments, chances
lost to hesitation, disappointments,
cowardice and courage. And if we’re lucky,
triumphs. Summits scaled and conquered.
A real joyous work of love discovered,
hopefully ourselves thrown into it
heart-first.

Boundaries, even and reasonably fair
found and cherished. Surfacing flaws.
Difficulties resented. And when it all
fails,

a crushing loss. Sometimes it feels like
we've been running flat out the whole way,
and haven't had a chance to catch up
to ourselves. No, love

is not a thing that “shouldn’t have
to be talked about.”