Puzzle of Community

I am not sure I can form attachment bonds to others.

I can love: deeply and sincerely too, but it’s of the moment.

Setting aside society’s moral ideal of eternal love, why is it so?

There is perhaps too much fear of the other.

Or,

like a candle sharing its flame to light another,

one must be bonded to before they learn to bond in turn.

My parent’s kindness or violence was mere whim,

not in response or acknowledgment of my being.

The unattached child, without parent or elder,

must grow themselves up and be sobered by life.

Untethered they can grow themselves into strange shapes:

that without knobs and sockets,

can never solve the puzzle of community.

My intention to love is like a pouring from a source to a vessel,

a bond is different, a bond a pouring out mixing, and settling,

of two waters into one.

Can my anxious, fenced in little heart, join the herd?

Can my rock pool heart return to the tide?

Or do I learn to live with this.

And be,

alone and without family and community in life?

And live as a temporary lover, a passing friend,

and hang up my humanity when I enter my own home,

and communion with a transcendental God in my living room?