Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within - James Arthur Baldwin

How joyful to be together, alone

as when we first were joined

in our little house by the river

long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;

and now instead of two stories fumbling

to meet, we belong to one story

that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness 

of mortals, who know themselves...

-Wendell Berry,

from "The Blue Robe"