Perhaps, this love
we've so often demanded
was never minted
to sustain us.
Perhaps love is no form
of currency at all;
but rather, a process,
like nuclear fusion—
that life-giving suicide
which powers the sun—
in which two individuals,
breathless and speeding,
collide and expire,
in the name of creating
not just a rarer element,
but enough heat and light
to make the lives
of billions of others,
however imperceptibly,
a little more survivable.
