What kind of love fades in and out based on mood?  Is it true love to go up and down like that, all according to how someone feels?  It seems odd to me, at least, to think it normal.

But we all conceal secret emotions, do we not?  Is that not part and parcel of the human condition?  And that despite the hidden darkness of our hearts?

Inside me rages the same life and death struggle all others endure.  Why then does it seem so abhorrent to me?  Is it because I lose the battle more often than I win it?

I am so humanly weak, I’m afraid.  To the core, in fact, and deep within I am but a child struggling against that which I do not fully comprehend.  It is my own doing that makes me this way.  I feel hopeless.  I feel heartless.  I feel I am nothing without you.

My proclamations of belief in mercy and compassion and humanity fall on my own unhearing ears.  It is too easy for me to say such things.  If I find myself capable of declaring such passions, why then do I not dispense them?  I gladly receive them from others as though owed such treatment.  Am I so selfish and uncertain that I feel deserving of these gifts while failing to give them to others?

Without you I fear no light shines within me.  It is with the simple loss of you my own loving heart fails.  I need your love inside me and without it I don’t know what I will do.

Am I nothing?

[circa 1985]