People like to romanticise love
Place it on a pedestal
Idealise it endlessly
As something quite unbreakable

But it needs constant energy
Because love’s default state is decay.
To strengthen it, and shore it up,
Like weakened, spinning clay.

If left alone, it wilts and slumps,
Falls apart and turns to dust
It is not a stone, it is alive
And so, decay it must.

Sometimes it crumbles anyway
Despite our best intentions
And we pour even more water onto it
To cleanse our recollections.

So with timid hands and hopeful reach
We find connections we hope to keep
We’ll nurture them until we can’t
Or until death do we part.