Existential love

Are love and beloved commutative?
You are beautiful and I love you!
I love you and you are beautiful!

What about loved but beloved?

Is that something one can even say, or something one must show?
Or something one must hear,
Or something one must see?

If we are made in God’s image, is he disappointed when we follow his example the way we are with our children when they follow ours?

Does the Lord feel what parents feel when their children copy their vices each time I harden Pharaoh’s heart?

Does he shake his head when you command survivors of ethnic infanticide to remove their sandals?

Does he plug his ears when we command our session trumpeteer to blow his fifth horn and our vocalist to belt out, “Woe! Woe! Woah!”

Does he hide his face as we cover the earth with water?

And where are our faces?
Why don’t we reflect the light we feel,
Do our contorted masks distort photons,
Like planes skew radar,
Our profiles misleading and shrunken,
While our bellies are exposed to any naked eyes looking up at that moment,
as our backs are exposed to sky,
And what do we have to show for it?

But where are our faces?
Why don’t we feel the light we reflect?
Do the photons scatter like outstealthed radar from our false smiles,
Our cross-sections lighter than air,
While the heavens and the earth envelope us completely and form a shape around us that we push through each day wondering why we feel such resistance?

Are endure and endured commutative?
You are cruel, and I love you.
I love you, and you are cruel.