Loved?

After a brief pause, a pause which felt as long and as short as the time one waits for trains to pass near a railway crossing, she said as she took a long breath, 

"I loved him. 

More than poets could love the moon. More than the parched summer grass loves the afternoon drizzle. I loved him more than I could have ever imagined. More than I thought I was capable of."

"Loved?" she thought while trying to find something unnamed and unrecognized in the tresses of grass. She asked her, still looking at the grass, 

"Did you say you loved him?"

"I did, yes," she turned towards her as she replied. 

"Past tense?"

"Yes," she replied crunching her eyebrows quizically, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just didn't know that the past tense of love existed... though grammatically it is a concept," she said as she turned her gaze from the tresses of grass to the sun across the sky. And thought, "Loved?! And do poets have to love the moon always? What if it's the sun they love? Was it ever Love if it transforms to Loved?"

And the pause continued once more. 

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