on love

 

Do you ever just think about love? How we were meant to love. How our hands fit together perfectly, fingers slotting together and your thumb resting in just the right spot to rub little circles in his. Why does the crook of her neck beckon you to lay your head in it? The curves and dips in her sides and the little bumps of his spine, the stretch marks and scars and freckles mapping out skin as if guiding you to where to kiss, where to hold—here are all the places I’ve lived here is where I’ve grown here is where I’ve changed where I’ve hurt see it and love me all the same. 

They say our bodies are made of stardust (I double checked just earlier). But dust is dust and bodies are bodies and we will stretch and scar and age and rot. But until then it is our home, the resting place of the nebulous thing we call a soul. And if eyes are the windows to the soul then surely our souls are made of love. Why else would our gazes find each other in a crowded room? Why else does love shine so brightly through a single look that we can see strangers across the floor and know that they have loved each other since before we saw them and will love each other after we leave them? If our bodies are stardust then of course our souls are something just as divine. 

And if our souls are love then it explains why it's so easy to love. Why love pours out of us through the smallest of things, so much so that I think if aliens saw it, they would be so confused at our intricate rituals. 

“We construct intricate rituals to touch the skin of other men”—all the silly ways we justify to ourselves our desire to touch, to be close. You reach out to fix his collar (because it bothers you when it’s not straight); you brush your fingers through her hair (because it is disastrously tangled); you hold his arm as you walk (because you feel wobbly from the drinks). The aliens would be weirded out, I think. Why not just say you want to touch? Why not just touch? But oh wait till they learn about all the intricate rituals we construct to tell someone we love them without telling someone we love them. It'd be maddening. But how could they understand that love is in everything we do? In every seemingly inconsequential act that, most of the time, even we don't even recognize as love. We forge reasons to reach out unaware that the limbs of our souls are constantly trying to tangle themselves together anyway.

The way the corners of your mouth lift up unprompted when you see her, your eyes immediately finding him in a room; how you lean towards each other when you talk, like petals curling into the center. It's listening and nodding and paying attention as they ramble about an interest you know nothing about and watching the ways their eyes light up. It's waiting for your friend to finish tying their shoelaces and holding the door open for the stranger behind you. It's doing the dishes because she cooked. It's adding more sauce on their spaghetti because you know that's how they like it. It's the hi hello how are you 

did u get home safe 

dude where are you

you're late 

hey are u ok 

thought of you when i saw this 

stay safe 

have you eaten

i wanna know what u think

text me when you get home

i miss y—

and they’re typed so quickly that you mix up a few letters, or they’re so painstakingly written they almost never get sent. It's sending that stupid meme that made you snort loudly because you think they'd like it too. 

Love is doing the groceries. It's singing together, loudly and maybe a bit off-key, but that's okay because you're giggly and warm and you can feel the song in your bones. It's telling her about the stray cat you saw because you know how excited she gets over them. It's forehead kisses and sharing blankets and showing each other your favorite movies and grabbing the umbrella he forgot.

There's more. There is definitely more, so much more that maybe it's as infinite as the sky. But we are terrifyingly finite, (and, actually, so is the sky) and maybe that's why I'm trying to list down as many of the faces of love as I can. Because maybe if I can put it in words and think up all the ways in which we love, then I'll be able to see love. And even though I won’t see it everywhere, I might see it in just enough places that I’ll learn to wield it as a broadsword to keep away the shadows and voices constantly clawing at the door of my mind. So that when the time comes that I inevitably grow tired and angry and sad and my chest once again hurts in the rhythm of an aching loneliness that has echoed through all my years and it causes me to drop the sword (and maybe kick it a few times in frustration), I will be able to look at the world and see and remember all the many ways in which man loves, and the ache will ease enough for me to pick it up again. And life is short and it sucks and we are born then we die, but life is also everything in between, and life and love have always ever been intertwined.

Love is the despite. Because love will not save you. Because, sometimes, love isn't enough. But that it was there at all still matters. The fact that you tried still counts. And the world is cruel and unkind and tries so hard to snuff it out of us, to reduce it to nothing but greeting cards and valentines day discounts and sanitized slogans until it is an empty shell of words devoid of anything real. It tries so hard to make us believe that is all there is, that is all that love is—and I need you to remember that's not true.

Love is fighting for what is right. It is believing that it could be better. Love is possibility. It's hope. It's hope in its foundations. Love is all around us—love is us. Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is.

It's the whole point, I think.