I Hate You Just Because I Love You Poem by Christopher McInnes

I hate you just because I love you,
because you took my soul –
which was doing very nicely in its own little way,
bumping along the ground,
managing the peaks and troughs of LIFE –
and you lifted it up with your voice,
higher than that mountain I just dreamed of –
as high as that star I would look up to
and think, it must be hot in there,
a million degrees Celsius and burning.

And I became that star and I did burn
(because I cannot fly) –
burned by the rapidity of my ascent
and burned by the heat of what I ascended to –
the heat of you.

And then, I trusted you (because I cannot fly) ,
and closed my eyes as you lifted me up -
not just for the beauty of you
(which I cannot gaze upon without that it fills my eyes with tears)
and not just for the love of you
(which I long to feel without external distraction)
but for the trust of you –
(that I would let myself be exalted by your singing
and not care where you took me) .

Yet you let me go – at the very acme of your Climb
you let me fall and the descent was terrible -
the wings you gave me were a lie and melted to nothingness
and I plunged into the abyss and drowned -
because I cannot swim -
and even if I could, I would have no strength to do so,
because the fall took everything from me.

So I hate you – and love you – and go from one to the other.
But there is a difference, the two do not balance out:
for I don’t hate you enough to kill you,
and I only hate you sometimes,
but I love you enough to die for you,
and I love you always.

And whether I die from the heat of loving you
or from drowning in hate of you,
one way or the other, I will die for you –
because I love you.

(With acknowledgments to Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 66)