to love at all

In order to fall in love at all
there must first be 
aware to both
a critical mass of shared things, common things, things mutually understood 
with just enough variance 
for surprise and debate and the sparking of original thought 
and as important it's pair, if not more
a mystifying, intoxicating attraction 
and then perhaps, the possibility, but not certainty 
to love. 

To fall and fall and fall and fall 
as if never to land again
weightless and timeless  
you feel everything and nothing all at once
so keenly alive
and well down within your inner insides 
at peace. 

To stay in love. 

But to stay in love a perplexing and equally mystifying affair
a combination of such delicate harmonies
near slight breezes at times 
feel to upset what limited and desperate balance 
you so barely mustered together to steady.

To stay in love, she said, is so much harder. 

Each autonomous self needing to stay whole 
whole pieces of them selves
needing to know when to compromise
and when to compromise would mean dissent from that truest self
something neither should risk  
but too it's that delicate balance 
a need to cooperate, to communicate, to meet 
to recognize that times, at times, bring with them 
certain shades 
needing little more than to be endured 
and other moments call to us 
to remind us that that falling impression 
crucial and beautiful though it was 
was a mere fraction of our beloved's self
shards of light casted in slivers 
catching our own inside lights
dancing barefoot and floating 
convinced each of us, together.

But now, we are called often to these other moments
reminded of those selves who met in fractions
those selves who must now be patient
and pay to time, what honoring to know 
to deeply know and truly know 
their beloved's whole self. 

Like one can know their own
to love at all
to stay in love
is to be there.