"They say it's better to have loved and lost.

But under what delusion could the cost of loosing be worth it?

Especially while never having loved at all won't cause you to fall on your face in sorrow.

Love is not borrowed and returned, it's not a book with pages you can turn, and it isn't a treat to consume.

Love is a cost. It's a price that you pay, it's a choice to say that they're worth your everything.

Love is laying your chest bare, sharpening the blade and handing someone the hilt, and with guilt asking "please don't kill me."

Love is messy. Our philosophy and poetry makes us think it's a novel token, yet our culture has broken our expectations and warped our consideration of the crushing cost of our affections.

Casually spoken, I love you, has turned us inward on ourselves, as a statement of status instead of surrender.

Spoken in truth, I love you, turns outward and it turns us inside out, spilling the doubt in our words and revealing the intensity of our victorious defeat.

Love goes first, it runs into the fire, not because love doesn't let you get burned, but because you yearn for the one behind the flames.

Love lays down. Not without a fight but only to win, because it's goal is not supremacy, but intimate, vulnerability.

Love lasts. Not because of an eternal flame or efforts to maintain a spark, but because love looks into the dark and makes the choice to push forward. Because true love is just as much a choice as it is a voice reassuring your decision.

Love hurts. Always. Because there is always cost, so lost love never goes away, and the burn stays as a reminder of what you've given, what you've promised, and how you've risen to heights above only to lay yourself down below their blade. Even when no longer threatened, you can still feel the weapon you handed over pointing at your heart, because no measure of apartness can ever win it back.

Never loving at all always lets you stand tall - proud, and you can proclaim that your whole.

But unless you've loved, you won't ever know loss, and without loss you will never know the cost of their heart and the joyous pain of your own, reminding you that it's still beating. "