…and love for most of them, was this weak ugly way of being. It left you too soft, too wide, too honest about the flowers in your bones, too much water, too easy for fever. So I learned to apologize for love. I sat on my hands when they wanted to touch. I tucked up my feet when they wanted to take me to someone, something. Falling in love became civil war. And the shame that would come, because I could not swallow the warmth from my eyes, every time, like I was taught to, was an everyday altering of my light. A lot of my life has been me convincing myself out of love. To know that the world finds the radical vulnerability of love such a dangerous flaw is a constant breaking of my breath, and to know that I must choose love anyway is a constant mending of my purpose…my duty….❤