The Story: Know Your Lover

Two faces, and neither one is finished. The planes meet and break. A white feather stands between them like a pause that refuses to become a lie. The poem does not offer a method for winning someone. It offers a way of seeing that will not flatter you.

Listen to their words. What's wrong. What's right. Feel emotional tones. Feel for tension. The first instruction is ordinary, and that is its strength. Love begins as attention. A tone can say what a sentence will not. Tension is not an insult. It is information. The painting sets the eyes at different depths so the viewer has to do the same work the poem names.

Feel for truth. It's in the eyes. Look them up, down, inside out, all around. Don't shy away. Be awake to good and evil. This is the hard middle of the work. A lover is not a mirror kept clean for your comfort. Good and evil are both in the room, and the poem will not let you sort them by charm. The red mouth is exact. The eye is not.

Be ruthlessly honest with yourself. You will know your lover when you meet them. The last turn is the one that makes the picture a Painted Poem and not a portrait of desire. Recognition is not a feeling that arrives from the other person. It arrives when the self has stopped bargaining. The feather does not write the verdict. It marks the place where the verdict would have been written too soon.

Know Your Lover belongs in The Divine Love Collection. It is not a softer name for romance. It is the condition romance requires. Look at the two faces long enough and the lesson is plain. You cannot meet someone you have not yet been willing to see.

Collection:   Devine Love Eternal