Both sides now

What is love? And where do we find it, aside from in our blood, the breasts of kin. Is it understanding struggles, or gentle dreaming? Is it wanting even when violent, human hardships take us aback, take away that snow white stumbling characteristic only of first kisses and the rarest bonds we break? I am so arched around, so molded to my fat past of love, a gray past, perhaps, but one with doubt divided. I have tried, too, to locate love here, to wait for the foundations that shake and shudder to eventually calm. It is more exhausting, this waiting, this willing, than the very particular passion of love. All I know is that I want a similar syrup as my past, that burning bittersweet both sordid and severe, the swelling of my heart when the world, small and centered, felt full, purred back in a way that was mine alone.