What We Call Love

The priceless treasure that was within my reach — yet I turned away without touching it — that treasure was love.
 
Everyone loves, while I simply feel. Everyone spends time with one another, while I deliberately keep my distance and burn myself alive.
 
Those I see before me — I don't know how deeply any of them can love. But I swear by love itself: to become a lover like me in this life requires the hardest of penances.
Even when I had hundreds of chances to hold my beloved, to touch them, to speak with them, to form physical and emotional bonds — I never took any of those opportunities.
I'm not saying that holding and touching can't be love!
 
But people touch and paw at each other so much, they harass their beloved so relentlessly, they analyze and dissect everything around that person so obsessively, that they never find the time to love them properly.
This isn't what we call love.