A Different Kind of Love – A Poem

I watched them

swim, the water

moving over their

bodies like quicksilver.

Colin swam up

to me. I was

sitting on the

edge of the pool.

“Why don’t you come in and play?”

He asked me.

“The water feels really good.”

I shook my

head, unsure of

what was holding

me back. The

sun came out

and it glanced

off of Colin’s

skin, highlighting the

muscles in his chest.

“I want to.”

He splashed me

with some water.

“So come in and play. You already got your feet wet. What’s the problem?”

I took a

moment to think

about all of it.

“I wrote my romance novels when I was unhappy. I wrote them when I had love, but it wasn’t real.”

Colin smiles and

sluices himself with

water so that

he is glistening.

“So?”

“So? Now I have love, real and true love.”

He grinned mischievously

at me. He

swam even closer.

“Then what’s the problem? Shouldn’t having true love only enrich your stories? Don’t you want to share that kind of love with others?”

I thought about

his words. I

had assumed that

writing romances when

I was with

someone who made

me happy would

be some kind

of betrayal. Instead,

it was a

reflection of that

kind of love.

I tried again.

“I wrote about broken men finding love in the most unlikely of ways. I don’t to write that kind of character anymore.”

Laughing, Colin splashed

me with more water.

“So don’t. You now have a different kind of love then you were used to. So write that. And I don’t think that any of them were broken.”

“You don’t?”

“No. They were brave enough to accept the gift of love, even though it terrified them. As you were brave enough to do with the love you have now.”

He reached out

and touched the

place on my

chest where my

heart lay beneath.

“You need to celebrate that kind of love.”

I tried one

more time to

make my case.

“But I want to write something important, something that touches people.”

Colin gave me

a stern look.

“And doesn’t every romance do that? Do they not connect right to a person’s heart, making them feel pure and true emotion? What’s more important than that?”

He put his

hand on my

shoulder and looked

at me right

in the eyes.

I almost lost

in their colour,

a light hazel,

flecked with bits

of gold and

green. He leaned

in closer to

me and I

smelled spice and

a citrus scent.

“Listen to your heart. It knows what it wants to write. Right?”

Colin began to

swim closer to

where Percy was

waiting for him,

the water gliding

off of Percy’s

body as he

stood to meet

his lover. Colin

looked back at

me, raising a

hand to his

eyes to block

the bright sun.

“Hey, do Percy and I get a happy ending?”

I laughed out

loud at the question.

“Doesn’t every romance end with a happy ending?”

I stood and

went back inside,

itching to write

about a different

kind of love.