When the conditions are right
Love grows like trees do
building itself out of light
And air
And water
Its hands plunging into the dark soil
When it is still only an acorn
In its rayless hole
With no mind to guide it upwards
it reaches for the sun
Then, particles of light
Fall onto the green
Shaky leaves
which
exhale oxygen
But
People forget to tell you that,
As the love grows
it changes
From that smooth sapling
Into a wide,
tree
With roots that seem to reach
The center of the earth
The bark thickens
And the tree’s growth
creates the stretch marks
Criss-crossing its surface
Your tree is no longer smooth
No longer young
But the scars
In the scars you can
See all that eaten light
