reasoned detachment

Stay where you are. If you
were closer, I would keep you
at arms length. Draw you in 
by closed eyes, there in the dark 
to embrace and kiss.

For in the light, too close
to deny, the inordinate,
exorbitant attention I would pay 
to scrutinize you minutely 
were you right here, always, 

no love could withstand 

- could it? My love of you 
would be blasted and withered 
in your presence, by your undeniable 
reality, in the disjoint and dissonance
between idea of you and you. 
In the pause wonder gives 
to all curious flaws and virtues 
contemplated, not noted before,

but here 
and now, 

impossible to deflect, gloss, or otherwise
miss. Unignorable, however ignoble
or glorious. Probably a bit of both,
in every bit of you taken point-blank
without quarter asked or deposited
as the game begins 

my love of you dies 

lives after lives

restarting at level one, each time
remade and alive in everything new 
and newly-known and recombined 
in my eyes - by your idea of me,
similarly mixed and combined,
falsified and refined. Grown
and growing alive 
in your eyes 

It could be disastrous, peril,
surprise