To Love Her

K. Barratt

 

To love her is to walk

Over egg shells and rose petals;

Is to embrace shy rainbows in the

Middle of the storm.

To love her is to decipher new

Worlds of pixels and apps and

Fake deaths that draw out laughs.

To love her is to live in wonder

At the witnessing of the beauty that

Is and the beauty that is becoming.

To love her is to bite your lips

Not to say the wrong thing that

Can be echoed at the therapist’s

Chair, twenty years from now.

To love her is like being a scientist

Of life, analysing the way she sees,

She thinks, she reacts, smirking

With pride at her talents and puffing

With frustration when she refuses

To go down the labyrinth and press

The red button you have set up, to

Help her, according to your mighty

Wisdom, grow.

To love her is to live in fear.

Is to see monster in every corner,

Dangers in every screen, five minutes

Of lateness set off alarm bells in your

Heart and you can hardly breath and the

World loses all its colours until

You hear the door open and everything

Is fine, once more.

To love her is like a one

Way mission to Mars.

There is no going back,

There are no easy ways out,

And Houston, we will have

Problems. And yet what

You are living with her,

Doing for her, learning from

Her, is the stuff new worlds

Are made off.

And you know that is how

It should be, because to love

Her, is to discover yourself,

Unbound yourself,

And allow yourself

To be the self you are meant

To be: a full human who

Loves her.