How many love poems have I written by now?
Years of fleeting affections committed to paper
countless scattered about, painted
by the fractured memories of lost days
Does a new love renew my right to write about love?
Does it invalidate all that came before?
Or is it the same tired story in a new font?
I want to believe in the magic of it –
to see the words as anything but generic.
But is love itself generic?
Millennium spent with it painting our breath,
time and time and time again,
in every language we've ever made.
Could I construct a phrase that is only ours?
And even if I could... should I?
Maybe love is a shared experience,
interlacing hearts through time and space –
and that is to be celebrated and embraced,
given breath with every heartfelt syllable,
not fled from with malformed ideas of uniqueness.
-Zero
