Love allows

Love allows someone to be as they are

Even if it hurts at times

Staying by their side

Or leaving if that is what

One of us

Needs to do

Sometimes love is the courageous force

Telling us to hang in there

When the going gets tough

And we feel we have had entirely too much

Of suffering

Love will always seek to understand

The wounds that lay underneath

It will not attack

And it will not seek to benefit from

Another person’s misfortune

And sometimes too

Love makes us rage

For the absence of it

Even as reality reminds us

Of this basic truth

Until we can be love

Sometimes to seek love

Ends in only in loss, heartache and pain

And many many bitter and painful lessons

The lead us further and further astray

From truly loving and being kind

To ourselves