What We Rarely Admit

This poem was written as a response to a prompt by Carolyn Jones in an ongoing writing experiment called "The Opportunity," which appeared on her publication, Words in Bloom. The prompt was "What does love ask of us that we rarely admit?" It appeared in the February 1, 2026  edition of Words in Bloom.

Love asks that we risk
being the one who reaches,
being the one who names it,
being the one who needs.

What we rarely admit is this:

love does not only want our hearts,
it wants our hands.

It wants us to show up
as if the days matter,
as if a life can be built
from the honest repetition
of choosing.

Again.
Again.
Again.

Not forever as a promise,
but forever as a practice.

And yes,
it asks for the terrifying miracle:

to let someone touch
the parts of us
we’ve been calling “unlovable,”
and call them
home.