Love is patient & waits calmly; assuredly; confidently. The yearning & burning; the desire & fire is a primitive need stoked by craving & longing. Passion alone isn’t love. You never come around except to sleep with me. I’m done with that. Don’t show up here again. D.G.

How do they do it,
the ones who make love without love?
Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away.
How do they do it,
the ones who make love without love?
From “Sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds