It's almost five in the morning. I'm thinking about watching the sunrise over the crumbling stones in the cemetery a few houses away from mine. I've never gone there so early, but something draws me as dawn approaches to the sanctity of that place.

I've been thinking about so much lately, but my mind feels calm. Calm as five in the morning. Calm as balanced love.

This weekend has been a growing weekend for me. Odd, really, how growth occurs without noticing, or more honestly, without the recollection of noticing.

I let myself rest this weekend like dough and these are the thoughts that rose.

**

There are different kinds of love. I've always said that, but honestly, I never really understood. I've always said that we love differently with each encounter. I've always said.

How often have I've said things to convince myself of their vitality?

Tonight I realized how very true it is that love is different every time.

I have a past. I have lovers that stay on my skin like wet grape leaves on a tipped over plate. And I have loved every one of them. All of them differently. All of them of varying degrees. All of them to find myself.

There are mistakes in love. There are mistakes in how we love.

Sometimes we aren't brave enough. Other times, we lack wisdom or strength or sincerity. Sometimes we don't possess enough of ourselves to hold another. And still, there are other times when we don't love enough or we love too much.

I met someone this weekend who wants desperately to be loved.

I heard two women this weekend in the throes of too-loud-secret-bliss.

I smiled at two lovers as they shut their bedroom door and laughed through the evening.

I thought about soulmates and what that concept means to me.

I thought about my past lovers sticking to my skin like grape leaves on a tipped over plate.

We walk away from people for reasons. Sometimes those reasons could never be vocalized. Sometimes the reasons are sloppy and disorganized and incoherent, because the language of love is imperfect, so how could the language of leaving love be otherwise?

I'm so thankful for my past lovers. Even the ones who have hurt. And ashamedly, even the ones I have hurt.

I am thankful for the imperfection of love. For the complexity of love.

If it were simple, nothing would linger. It'd be as memorable as childhood growing pains--how soon it is the most severe, simplistic pain is forgotten.

And the difficulty of love makes the intense pleasure of love bearable--it gives us something to sink into, and for a moment, we believe in ourselves fitting into another person.

And every love that's come before allows for this one.

And this one has been written about much better than I ever could.

It's not grape leaves sticking to my skin, but it's part of my skin--rising like goose bumps, conscious of her presence always.

It's because of the imperfection. It's because we do not see a better self in the other, but it's because we see a better self in ourselves because of the other.

It will always be clich� to write about love. How could it be otherwise? That is, until the language of our skin is liberated.

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