Kindling

In the beginning,

you thought you knew

what love was.

We felt it;

that scorching, all-consuming excitement.

The thing that makes you think,

“This person is my everything.”

We were fools.

It was love, yes-

in it’s birthing stage.

Messy. Squalling. Ignorant.

I know that now.

If it had been stable love,

we would never have said

all those terrible things

we said to each other;

we would never have

treated each other so unspeakably.

 

There were times,

a good while later,

when you were not my favorite person.

In fact, I despised you.

I know.

I ask myself the same question:

“How can you loathe someone you love?”

Beats me.

But you can.

You felt the same at times.

I could see it when you wouldn’t look at me.

It didn’t feel like love anymore,

and we both doubted.

But then,

within  the smoldering pile of ashes

left from our rabid inferno,

a single spark, a memory,

left us clinging to each other

in the midst of our woeful rhapsody.

 

The hurts healed,

slowly.

Sometimes painfully.

The ugly scars were made beautiful

because we knew the agony

of the recovery.

You  didn’t look at me

the way you once did,

back in the infancy of Us.

I missed that,

but I was comforted

in the knowing that we chose Us.

That flame seemed cooler

than it once had been,

but more steady.

Instead of self-preservation,

we learned to

give ourselves away to one another.

We never even noticed

when our Selves melted into one.

I guess the blaze was hotter than we thought.

 

Now,

we are both wiser.

Love, you say?

I laugh.

We’ve barely scratched the surface