Love Abides
May 1 2008


That you can love someone
without liking them
doesn’t strike me as odd at all.

Because there is nothing intentional about love.
You get born into it,
like mother’s milk
like blood.
Or you fall
every neuron firing like crazy;
into blue sky, no parachute,
or face-first
onto pavement.
Or a kind of contagion
— the voice of God,
some ideology
that will save us all.
So like loyalty, and obligation
love abides.
As someone smarter than me once said
“home is where they have to take you in.”

But it’s friends you’d rather be with
— the fun times,
the parts you easily forgive.
And the relief
no one expects to move in,
no one to pick-up after.
And above all
the laughter, and disasters, you’ve shared.

Best friends from childhood is rare.
The boundaries of friendship protect you both;
and still, your secrets are safe with her.