A Small World

When you love someone

It’s a very small world

Because exploring doesn’t frighten you as much

Because reaching out to other people doesn’t seem as hard

Because strangers look like friends

And friends look like family

And family redefines itself

It stretches

It expands

It reaches

Like words reach down

To mean bigger things

Or maybe just

To mean exactly

What they should have meant

All along

Comfort, Joy, Laughter

Hope, Affection, Bright

Smile, Kindness, Tears

You can touch the walls

On either side

Of anywhere

Knowing there isn’t a way to fall

And if you do

You’ll fall back in love

Realizing someone was ready

If the walls gave out

There are places you thought you’d never see

That come into view

And things you gave up on

That materialize

After years and years

You found someone who loved you

You big old fool

How could anything be impossible

After that

Suddenly there are no more

Things You’re Missing Out On

Just things you’ll get to later

And whatever you truly miss

You were never meant to find

In the first place

You have someone

Who holds your feelings

Who tells you stories

Who records your history

Alongside their own

There are countries

And heavens
And underwater kingdoms

And ice and heat

And panoramic lifetimes

That used to belong

To more adventurous people

People without fear

People who had someone

To hold their feelings

And now you’re those people

Aren’t you?

Poetry would tell us

About waking up

Next to someone

And how it’s a gift

But if we’re being honest

Every day you wake up

Not in someone else’s arms

Because eventually

Sleeping reasserts itself

As a solitary thing

Legs kick

Snoring develops

Bedsides are chosen

No, instead, you wake up

In someone else’s world

And what a world it is

How modestly endless

How tremendously small

Because love can take a world

And shrink it down

While spreading it out

All at the same time

It can make a lifetime

Seem endless

And instantaneous

It can gather you up

And take you

Wherever you need to go

And though you’ve heard it

All your life

It really is a small world

After all

But what you never heard

Was that love

Is what makes it that way