This, Too, is Love

I won't pretend this won't hurt. I won't pretend to be more than your Clark Kent, so don't leap from that window expecting that I'll catch your heart before it hits that pavement and shatters. Myth and legends, even pretend in the service of love, are forgivable, but when the story ends you can only pretend the pages haven't all been turned for so long. We've been through this enough times to know that it hurts, every time, to know that time runs with the whole bundle of memories and moments out the back door, that time will bring more through the front. Paltry balm, hardly numbing at all, these perspectives, but this, too, is love. Exalting and excruciating beginning to end, everything between—this, too, is love.