lover's angel told the captain's man

We know little but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, that ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

--Rilke

how much more difficult, then, to not love when love has burrowed deep into you. though I guess it's more difficult to love if by love you mean to bear love, not to exalt in it. if love were a skin, and we were reptiles, leaving it on hot stones at midday, already feeling the new skin up against the ligaments, how much less weight we'd bring to bed with us at night. but we're not reptiles, and the skin of love is not skin at all, but blood, and we carry it with us, feeling at times like we are little else.