I owe so much to those I don't love. The relief as I agree that someone else needs them more. The happiness that I'm not the wolf to their sheep. The peace I feel with them, the freedom — love can neither give nor take that. I don't wait for them, as in window-to-door-and-back. Almost as patient as a sundial, I understand what love can't, and forgive as love never would. From a rendezvous to a letter is just a few days or weeks, not an eternity. Trips with them always go smoothly, concerts are heard, cathedrals visited, scenery is seen. And when seven hills and rivers come between us, the hills and rivers can be found on any map. They deserve the credit if I live in three dimensions, in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space with a genuine, shifting horizon. They themselves don't realize how much they hold in their empty hands. "I don't owe them a thing," would be love's answer to this open question.