I'm so tired of wanting you

I'm so tired of wanting you--but I can't sleep,
I've been writing letters,
I've been licking envelopes,
I cut my tongue.

The wish keeps bleeding,
the words keep beading into meaning --
the days I've spent since our last meeting
keep begging to leap into your hands.
All the secrets that might have won your love
now crowd out between my teeth,
tumble in pathetic pleading.

I must mend myself instead,
wince and spit into a handkerchief.
It stings to speak,red on my lips.

Aren't I much more lovely like this?
Oh, wouldn't you like a kiss?

Thought!

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.
["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 7.1]

THE TWO LEARNED MEN by Khalil Gibran

Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other's learning. For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer.
One day the two met in the market-place, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods. And after hours of contention they parted.
That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past.
And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books. For he had become an unbeliever.

LINES - by Sangharakshita (1946)

From the unlocked cage of my heart
White doves of love go winging,
Wild larks of song rise singing,
The ice of my heart is broken, broken,
Joy's fountain leaps in the air;
And all the while no word was spoken:
I only looked at something fair.