Love has a way of entering the back door

of your life

when you least expect it.

When you had your life precisely charted out,

your keys in hand, your perfect plans,

while walking out the front door,

when suddenly, BAM!

the back door slams against the wall,

like a hurricane coming in.

I was just leaving, you said.

You had to lay down your keys

and your map—because what just came in looked nothing

like that,

but what came in had its own plans for you.

While standing there, you’d never guess, looking at the mess,

it was only love come

to save you.

Resistance is futile, it said, surrender best.

But of course, it might take a while to learn that.

And when you finally get it

while it’s got you, this thing of your undoing,

this decimator of plans,

it becomes sweetness in your hands,

and the whole splendored universe moves

inside of you.

You wonder how it is you never saw such an endless

midnight sky blinking back at you.

Love is a shape-shifting trickster in ways you’d never conceive,

can take you to dizzying vistas you’ve never seen

on some crazy and crooked paths.

Love says,

It’s not about what you think it is. It’s more than that.

Love comes to bust down your doors and walls,

shake possibility loose in your mind,

get you to move beyond your self-imposed boundaries

as a citizen of the stars

into your own feral nature.

Out beyond the dictates of decorum or certain civilities

waits your aching passion,

but first you must learn to surrender

whatever safety

you think you have, then leap

from the precipice of that life.

© 2014 Shoshana Wolfington