Could anyone love anyone who loved anyone so much?
Her Daddy told her, a child still stuck on Santa,
that nothing mattered but love.
Words like home.
She was sick of people imagining what they could imagine,
but anyone could be anything, for an hour,
names would only have obliterated the thing.
He was the kind of good man
only a truly insecure person
could find contemptible.
The present has its way of intruding, though,
whether you like it or not.
All her hoarding had depleted her, and
she gave what he let her give, but
did it really count as generosity if you had no choice?
He always could dismantle her without an owner's manual,
the gift that kept on taking, this brute business of Nature
like a swallowed razor cutting her from the inside.
She stood, awash in the strangeness of raw engagement
it bruised her heart to look at him, but then
she'd never been good at telling
the possible from the impossible.
Pain no gain. Pain or gain. Pain and gain.
You chose, and the choice unmade you.
Here's how you find out.
Just watch yourself and see which one you pick.