An Expanding Spectrum
(Excerpt from The Exquisite Pain of Flowering)
It never occurred to me that love could look
different than I expected.
Books and movies will have us believe that love is red—
consuming and stimulating.
But I have felt love as the color blue—
the hottest part of a flame,
and as the color green—
as earthly and sturdy as a Sequoia Redwood.
But it wasn’t until I abandoned
all preconceptions of what it should be,
did I find love is white:
so soft you can miss it looking for it elsewhere.
It is made up of the entire spectrum;
it doesn’t absorb us; it only mirrors us.