Abstaining from Love

Abstaining from Love
by me, just now.

"If I can choose not to have sex
until I am married, why can't they
abstain from being gay," she said,
my fellow seminarian, years before we graduated
with our BAs. She to the right and I too the left,
literally as I set out from the radical school on the West Coast,
she the remained on the East -- South East
-- the cradle from which we were both born.

I counseled, you have your dream that you will find
someone and a good chance that your family will
recognize him if your love in true, and even if it's not
the State will, so long as you pay the fee for a paper license.

You abstain in anticipation of fulfillment. You suppress yourself
to give more one hopeful day to the one man, dream that is meant for you.

Yet, you are still you. Not changed, completed.
Would you deny that to a man that loves a man or a trans
who loves a trans as you dream to love a man, or a woman
that loves a woman wishing for a child as you wished and wish.

Kristin, love gives before it takes.
And the more you wish to take away
from that which you do not love, but fear
the less you will have to give to Him.