Love's Dance

I’m not sure I want to dance,
This dance we call love,
Where everything I am,
Has to be lay at the door of the hall,
Before entering.
I’m not even sure I want,
To bring it all before your feet, for witness.
As a sort of compromise,
Where the only real compromise is of myself.
I’m not sure I really need 
The way you move in the dark against me, 
“Someone to lean on?”, you say.
I carry my own weight,
And you could be a tree, or the floor,
I expect nothing of you.

What I am sure of,
Is I need to dance with you, 
I choose you, as a vessel, to feel myself in,
and I offer you the same,
Those points where you and I meet and differ,
The contrast.
Where you effect me deeply,
By the mere existence of,
Your hand pulsing, your skin against mine,
The shift of your weight ever so softly,
Against my hips.
And, with a sigh, as merging, settling, we share,
The deeper intimacies of the earth’s crying for itself,
To be held, seen,
I need you to ask of me only this,
That i move the way my feet must,
That my rhythm echoes my heart’s breath,
That I do not change a single movement for you and your comfort.
Only then, will I believe, again, 
In this dance we call love.

-Artemis Mandala