Our daily love

 Fall in love daily.

That was the rule I lived by for many years.

Busking on the streets, hitching rides to new cities

Forever a stranger

Perceived as an inconvenience, an obstacle 

The vast majority ignored my existence

Being invisible felt safe

I saw that everyone carries the same ache

The same longing to be understood

To be acknowledged 

And that is the very foundation of relationship

When someone acknowledges your existence

Even in the slightest way, a head nod, a half smile

You're relating

For a moment 

For eternity 

You're human

So often lonely, hopeless and afraid 

I made this rule 

To keep hope alive

Not hope in some romantic fantasy 

Or that someone would save me

But hope that as long as I was alive

I would find love everyday. 

I learned a lot about love this way

Love isn't an instinct the way attachment is

Love is a skill you practice

It is an endeavor, an adventure, an odyssey 

To love well

You must learn to let go

Love will challenge your inhibition

It will reveal your attachments to 

Everything that isn't love

Your persona, desire, longing

All the shame you've contained and rejected

There were days when I saw no people

Sometimes weeks

But I still followed my rule

I fell in love with deserts and mountains 

Sunsets and trees

I fell in love with sensation

So cold I thought I would die

But I loved the cold for reminding me i was 

Still alive. 

I found that not all we love is beautiful. 

Alleyways and dark corners of dive bars

Drinking circles on sidewalks that turn into fights

The bodily beatings that never touched my soul

People in so much pain they destroy themselves

Sometimes they destroyed me too

I'll never regret loving

I refuse to be ashamed or embarrassed 

I won't measure love by how long it stays

Or what it gives in return

Like a climber pushing past the limits 

Embracing the aches and pains

Straining against weight that increases 

heavier with every move upwards

I fall in love to build my strength

So that

When all I have and all I've done

is finally stripped away

I won't cling to my dying breath

I will still love even in passing

As I loved passing strangers with kind eyes

And half smiles

For so many years

While I was mostly invisible

But still I fell in love daily