When the girls and boys in drama class gather

around each other in groups of five and three 

they are not pretending to be kind

like they know how to make love look

authentic better than we do

and I am mesmerized by their care

for one another, as well as their 

jocularity and their

comfortableness with quiet, 

the choice to not speak a word 

or paint their hair red or yellow or purple

or sing loud broadway tunes

or reach their arms around one another

when they are sad and cry

and I wonder

if I grasped this freedom when 

I was younger if I would not

observe love from afar but dance around it

and let it swallow me whole 

even while I melt with angst

and beg you to accept me just as I am

right now, 

how beautiful it is to be loved.