Isolated Love

There is nothing I want more than to be in bed with you.

Sure, sex is great,

But I really just want to wake up to the sunlight shining through your hair.

I want to feel safe in your arms again,

I want to melt to your lips again,

I want to kiss you in our spot downtown,

I want to stop being scared.

Falling in love during a pandemic sucks, apparently.

I get to see you sometimes.

Every few weeks, or months, if there’s a high risk for the moment.

We text and we call

And when we are together we make such incredible, bright love

That I don’t know how I called what I’d done before lovemaking.

But we usually aren’t together.

And that leaves me with my thoughts.

You are my sunshine, breaking through cloudy days

With a glorious smile and beautiful hilarity,

And a snorting laugh that chases all my fears and doubts away.

But I am left alone with my thoughts more often than not,

And that has never been good for me.

I keep thinking back to Ozymandias.

That king of kings,

Whose empire stretched to the horizon,

Whose works could bring the most mighty, trembling, to their knees.

That king who is dead,

Whose kingdom is dust.

The Romans are gone.

The Byzantines, the wealth of Malta.

Gilgamesh never found immortality.

There is a rush when I am with you,

I cannot help but feel mightier than all those before.

When you steal the breath from my lungs,

Sweep me off my feet,

Tug my hair and turn me to mush,

I feel greater than God.

Even God’s kingdom will end though.

Even if it lasts longer than humanity,

The sun will swell and swallow the Earth in a few billion years.

Love, though?

It is art.

Two thousand years after Sappho found herself unable to weave for want of a woman,

Gay women are called Sapphic after her,

Lesbian after the isle she lived on.

Yes, when we are dead and gone,

Sappho’s works will be forgotten,

But it was worth it in the first place, wasn’t it?

There is no better feeling than to want someone so much that you cannot function,

And then to have them.

It is worth it to feel this way.

Even if there is no legacy,

If no one reads this poem,

If we have no children,

If we are never wives.

If Anne Frank thought it was worth it to crush on her friends while hiding from Nazis,

Then it is worth it to be in love

Hiding from a virus.

Love is art, after all,

And art’s value doesn’t come from legacy.

Beauty is valuable.

Even if it’s just a moment.

Even if it’s waking up to see the sun shining through your hair like a halo,

When I am seeing you,

Feeling you,

There is no wealth in the world that would ever compare.