[Poem] "Which kind of love is truly enough?"

[Ophi 258]

There is a question I want you to answer

before this poem can finish.

 

Not aloud.

Not to me.

Just somewhere honest.

 

Tell me:

 

Have you ever been loved beautifully

by someone who never stayed?

 

Or stayed

by someone who never knew how to love you gently?

 

Love the feeling arrives first.

 

It is lightning in the bloodstream,

a name becoming sacred in your mouth,

the unbearable softness of being chosen.

 

It is the glance across crowded rooms,

the trembling hand,

the finally.

 

You know this love.

Everyone does.

 

It teaches your ribs how to sing.

 

But now answer me this:

 

What happens

when the music stops?

 

When illness replaces poetry.

When silence outlives desire.

When the body is tired,

when grief makes monsters of people,

when loving someone feels less like flying

and more like carrying water uphill with bleeding hands?

 

Does the feeling remain?

 

Be honest.

 

You already know it flickers.

 

That is the cruelty of feeling:

it is weather.

It comes holy.

It leaves hungry.

 

And yet,

 

Love the action wakes up anyway.

 

It folds laundry in quiet resentment

and still folds it neatly.

 

It learns your mother's birthday

after the butterflies die.

 

It says

“I am angry with you,”

without turning cruelty into a weapon.

 

It stays during the uncinematic parts.

The hospital chairs.

The repeated stories.

The nights where neither of you are beautiful.

 

Tell me:

 

Which sounds more like love to you?

 

The heartbeat?

Or the hand holding pressure against the wound?

 

Perhaps the feeling is what opens the door.

But action

is what keeps anyone inside the house.

 

And still, action alone can become hollow too.

 

A ritual without warmth.

A marriage of obligations.

A cold hand performing tenderness from memory.

 

You have seen this kind of love as well.

People who stay faithful

while emotionally disappearing for years.

 

So then,

which is enough on its own?

 

The feeling without action

burns bright and dies starving.

 

The action without feeling

survives, but forgets how to live.

 

Maybe love was never meant to survive divided.

 

Maybe real love is not choosing one over the other,

but learning the terrifying discipline

of turning feeling into action

again

and again

and again...

 

even after the feeling changes shape.

 

Because it will.

 

Because one day someone will ask you for love

when you no longer feel poetic.

 

And one day

you will ask the same of someone else.

 

So before this poem ends,

answer the question most have been avoiding:

 

If your heart stopped racing tomorrow,

would you still know how to love?

[Malins Welcome 1519]

Love as feeling vs love as choice is always a rich theme. I especially like this part, which hit really well.

Quote

Because one day someone will ask you for love

when you no longer feel poetic.

 

As a minor criticism, this line
 

Quote

It learns your mother's birthday

 

seems to accidentally introduce a perspective shift. throughout the rest of the poem "you" has been the lover but in this line "you" is the one loved