A Stranger Shade of Love

I exist within a shade of love,
unfamiliar to myself even,
I care for things
like time
and silence
and the patience of a moment
drawn into the night
and made to live forever in my heart
I find myself
in something
somehow
linked,
somehow akin to love
A drifting wayfarer
composed of fate
and stars
and falling things
like autumn leaves
and quiet eyes
and a slipping soft
and supple dress onto the floor.
I feel the weight of things
like manic grief
and the formulas of forgotten lives
without forgotten loves
as the efforts of those times come close to touching me,
close to changing me,
close to making me believe in them.
But I do not believe.
Not in things like love unfeigned,
but love unquenched
and love unfurled
and love, like a rocket,
blooming in the sky
with its hot and fiery breath
in an arcing swift display
that changes everything
around it in its light
magnificent
for only but a moment,
hearing oo's
and aah's
and things like laughter in the summer breeze
as ice cream is devoured
and bags of candied popcorn pass
from one excited hand into another.
But like the rocket and the summer breeze
and the ice cream and the popcorn too,
so love,
so fleeting,
so final,
is ephemeral as well.
It closes its now clutching hand
too tight
around my soul
and gives me little room to breathe.
It shows me things like who I am,
not who I wish to be,
and makes me live a life of pain
and excess
and the thoughtlessness of me.
But love,
sweet vixen laid,
sweet chamber maid
to the heart of who I am,
gives me more
than anything I could dare to dream;
more than anything I could hope to be
or just become.
Oh love,
sweet love,
sweet half-known cutting thing,
be not gone from me anon.
Be not changed nor changing
nor be left behind,
but be my friend tonight
and every night.
Be there when I wake,
and when I sleep,
sweet love,
be dreams to me
that come in wrapped displays
of elegance
and eloquence,
a heart-shaped form
of who I am to be,
of who I am to thee.
Oh love,
sweet love,
sweet love,
my shade of thee is warped, I know,
but educate me, love.
Entice me from the darkness of my soul
and dream of me as well.
Believe in me,
sweet love.
Believe that I am more than what I seem to be.
Believe that I am more than what I've said
or what I've done
or what I've attempted to avoid.
Believe,
sweet love,
in me.
And I will,
a shade no more,
believe entirely in thee.