Grinding

dark dark the night outside, through the window, my face in the light reflected to the runaway sound of the train
and I think
what is love really, other than a compromise, made
out of fear of loneliness. It is not what is hoped for, no roots deep in some life force promised once in poems that I believed in.
It is merely this:
age and society, and bad romance movies
they tell me it is the way to happiness, to fulfilment, and where the soul resides, it will conquer all things: fear, even death
but it is a lie, of course, it is a poor consolation to our true destinies.
What love really is, is this: A vow made in some secret part of the heart, like the old woman in the old story who would one day turn a metal rod into a needle. You grind day after day after day
moment after moment of work
then one day, you wake up to the face of a stranger beside you, and you think, I have loved with the bones of my hand.
This is love. It is a work I have chosen to do day after day. It is the happiness grasped at and pieced together. Stuck together in notebooks or keepsake boxes. I have snatched these moments of light against the darkness. That's when I kiss you again and again, and you wake up and smile at me, and I wonder again, how short these true moments are. And how long those other moments at the mill, praying for the day after a hundred years, the old woman finally holds a needle up to the light.