We are never as strong as we feel we are. What’s ostensible, what’s shown, matters little. As we walk, with our eyes wide open, sometimes in wonder, often in fear, we need someone beside us to interpret the world.   A conversation is the blood flow of a love story.   To be generous enough to listen without interpretation, to hear without interruption, is a gift we give our loved ones. Because we already trust them. And everything we share with them is only an expansion of the shared world. There’s nothing good or bad, we are not judges, we are partners, and when we choose to let the other know everything, we let them into the fragility of our beings. There’s first fear, a testing out, as it were, for nobody wants to be broken by unkind hands. Then there’s unabashed laughter. Tears come in the end. Because that’s when dams burst, and you don’t mind, because you know there is someone ready to catch every teardrop, so that the sorrow doesn’t go unacknowledged or wasted.   I think tenderness as a vital ingredient of love is often underestimated.   Knowing how the trajectory of our lives changes due to the entry of some people in our lives, we need a safe zone for our fears and vulnerabilities. Often we find it immediately, often we need to search on, often never.   Much more then the highs and the rush of dopamine which love gives, what finally sustains it is the generosity we accord each other as a place of protection. Where we know we can say anything without being judged, where we can be goofy without a cantankerous response. Or be afforded a strong attempt to understand even on disapproval of what we’ve revealed of ourselves.   Else then love is a snail out in a tentative dawn, which senses danger and withdraws within its shell, and finds it difficult to emerge again.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on poems themselves - The Life & Times of a Song Stopping by a Cafe to Drink a Poem I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. But Yet, and Yet.... Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: When Life Is Beautiful by KALAKFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11355-when-life-is-beautifulLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license