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Equal Affection

These lines from the Auden poem More Loving One feel very close to the heart today

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

So many times in life we are in one or the other end of an unequal affection and burn like the stars overwhelming the other with what we give. To us that intensity is real and even draining of life itself but it may not be seen or felt the same way. 

And yet at other times, we are that unfeeling one - unable to see the love that is burning away for us, taken over by grief that it is not returned in nearly equal measure. We cannot make ourselves cross that chasm, make it right with the one who loves us and make the affection more equal. We let the wounds scab over and also destroy what connects our hearts.

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