How to Fall in Love With Yourself

Do not believe anyone
who tells you it will be easy
or it will be impossible.

It will have less to do with
photographs and more to do
with mirrors; not one single
budding, more a slow-growing vine.

Practice it long before you’ve found
the limb or the nape of it; love all of it;
love even the lack of it, the empty reach
and longing need.

Add all of it to the well.
When you thirst for a love
with no reason and no need
for reason, sip from it endlessly—
a love that refills, that tires of itself
but does not exhaust itself.

The practice itself is the fall
and the nape of it, the mirrored reflection,
the slow-growing vine. It is not easy,
but it is this simple: Say the words out loud;
say the words again. Trust that
you’re the only one who can.

—Dale Trumbore