Contagion

What spreads
through communities
like a drop of ink
in water,
needing only
one point of origin
to leap from person
to person until
all are infected?

What moves effortlessly
between people
with only the slightest brush
of contact,
a force which,
once detected,
has traveled with such
imperceptible speed
that it is impossible
to determine
its original host?

What spurs leaders,
stuns nations,
and consumes man
from the inside out?

Love.