A little girl looked at me today and said
"Being in love is magical."

How can I tell her the two sides of love?
How there's a high and a low,
an up and a down?

One day you feel happy
and want to rejoice
and smile and sing
to the sky and dance in the rain and
jump in the puddles and make
snow angels in your jeans and thin
coat because you know you won't
care how cold you get!

But another day you'll want to
stay in bed all day and eat that box
of chocolates you know isn't good for you
because it all doesn't matter. You'll want
to sleep and cry, sleep and cry, not smile at
the terrible jokes your friends make and not be
comforted by the gestures people give to you.

You'll feel your heart elevated, your pulse soar
higher than an eagle, your face turn crimson and your
palms get saturated with every bit of nervousness in you
when you see the person you like and you'll stare and
smile and chuckle nervously...

But you'll also feel your heart break in your chest, your
lungs fall somehow to the pit of your throat as it clogs
up and you don't know how to talk but just that you feel
your eyes sting from the strain you're putting on them not to
tear up and you have to say a long line of "I'm fine" ' s over and
over to them to let them know that you need them to get away
and you need to go away yourself, in a state of decay in your
bedroom where no one can see you for a while, stone-faced
and no longer in love, but in pain.

So how can I tell her all of this truth?
A universal truth felt by all?
I can't break her heart,
for all is felt by experience.

I just look at her and say,
"Yes. Yes it is."