equal affections cannot be

So you decided a long time ago against hoping, in the course of beating the tides of your love against the unforgiving shores, to pull in more than a grain of affection here or there, and then wailing at the disparity. It's a little embarrassing, even if you try to keep in mind that the tide eventually wins, because while one part of your brain is all, "Look at the Grand Canyon!" the rational part knows your one life to live is not a geologic age. Your life is a magic act, and you can conjure, and you can conceal; you can pretend it's not about manipulation at all. But it is. 

I mean, you'd worked the trick out two decades ago. The fact that you cried at your wedding about the woman nobody could love marrying the man who could love nobody was certainly a little about the ironic truth and the beauty in the balance of the sentence, but more about the incredible amount of alcohol you consumed.

When you put on a show for years, your own success should not surprise you. The More Loving One was always your stage name. In your act, it is always you who picks up pretty stones to please someone, carries them until your pants are as weighted as Woolf's; you who spends dreamtime on other people; you who gives over time to anybody with a happiness otherwise reserved only for sleep. You were never going to be in debt again, and you won't be.

So. You don't get to feel sorry for yourself, or confused. You don't get to be surprised when your prestidigitation ends with your hands always open and always empty.