He Says

By D. Avery

He sees himself as a learner and a teacher. Adventure, yes, but never conquest, he says.

He loves, he says, says love is a borderland, its borders permeable and transient, a place for walls to crumble, for barriers to come down, an exercise of dissolution, a pursuit of communion.

Each encounter, he says, is the coalescing of commonalities and of differences, exploring paths of shared experiences while discovering new paths that lead to new territories, unbounded.

Yet inevitably he withdraws, retreats behind invisible lines, already looking to the next frontier, while she surveys the breach, takes stock, shores up.