Perhaps the great chasm between who he is and who he's becoming is best kept in his peripheral vision, all to maintain love's pedestal in its sacred, upright position - that monument to pure intention. But why must we choose one path over another? Why can't all forms of love and acceptance find their place in the light?

Who dictates that the heart must bind itself to just one soul? Who claims that love, once given, ensures reciprocation? To share one's entire existence - the multitudes of experiences, the awkward, unequal, messy shape that forms our being - can be transformative in the right hands. In such moments, it becomes a rewarding, powerful, emotional, and spiritual dance.

Yet in the hands of one whose ideology conflicts with our own, it becomes a labyrinth of sharp corners. We find ourselves bouncing between allowed spaces of existence, until inevitably, we crash into those pointed edges that pierce straight through our being. This happens when our vision of potential living fails to align with another's truth.

Eventually, we learn to release the hope of being wholly understood and accepted. We pour ourselves into that singular thing we love, even as it claims a piece of us each day. We choose this slow dissolution because we'd rather exist in fragments than witness such profound love cursed to nonexistence.

Love is a consuming force that always takes more from one side than the other. Each spiritual connection, born from pools of divine light, casts its own shadow. In that darkness, one soul slowly parts with pieces of itself so another may flourish and flower.