By Gala
Date: 8 September 2000

The Hesitation of The Heart

You look at me with something like yearning,
and a moment before our hands touch
there is the barest instant
a pause,
uncertainty
the merest glaze of doubt.
You wonder what this minute
will cost you emotionally down the road---
try and calculate
if you can afford the luxury
of loving one such as I,
and worry that loving you
will somehow break me.
It's happened before---
once you did the breaking,
another time were broken yourself,
and you've viewed the carnage
of my everyday work in progress.
Would it not be kinder,
wiser,
more gentle
to smother this now,
before it grows any more vast?
There is a certain logic to the thinking.
Only I would never remove my tongue
to avoid a bad taste,
never cut off my head
to skirt a headache,
and I would never pull you from my heart
just to cut my losses down the road.
You must choose for yourself, love.
But I reckon you are worth
whatever the price
and if you don't believe,
can't accept
or are slow to understand
I will just have to keep
showing you my heart
until the answer is so plain
that you can't change
the question again.

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