Dear Society:
I like to think that I’m the rock,
Yet this I know: she’s my Gem.
Rough on the edges, unfinished to the core,
I thought I knew what love meant.
I know well what it means to me,
but, hearing you, I might be wrong,
and my preconceptions are errant:
There’s more to it than I thought.
I’m trying to learn, but it’s not easy.
But I think that you’re all wrong, and that
I’m the one who actually has it right.
You can talk about your take on love
and what it should drive a man to do...
My love is somehow different.
I think it’s more permanent,
less dependent upon passing fancies of the day.
I’d like it if her expectations
weren’t expressed as mandates,
and your narrative doesn’t help—
putting me in a box so small as to
rob me of my very manhood.
Have I no degree of self-determination?
Am I now society’s automaton, expressing
my love through carefully prescribed acts?
Or is there any room at all for
my own creative expression?
The pundits love to speak of love language
But does no one speak mine?
Are your ears all so deaf to my utterances?
I have expressed myself, but no one hears,
And if she listens to you, she will never hear me.
You should be quiet now; we’ve heard enough.
I like to think of myself as the rock,
But I know that I am not.
Yet this I do know: She is my Gem.