what i hate most is the dichotomy—
i must love you or i hate you,
i must win you or i've lost.
all the beauty of love is in the uncertainty,
the power of words is in their connotation:
but i speak, you do not hear.
if i am one without the other,
if all that's left is one hand and the other gone
(meandering, wandering, a brook that
twirls down the hillside, a raindrop
clambering down from the clouds)—
if i must walk where i have been running,
the loss is so sure.
i must love you or i've learned nothing,
i must win because my words create the rules.
you are bound by nothing
but my voice and my mouth and my hands,
because with fingertips so light against your wrist,
can you really say no?
you must decline or you have accepted.