Love is the only reason I am here.
I tried to barge and let myself in completely, only to take two, then three steps back. Walked, then ran no farther than the perpendicular to which on my left was a dead end, on my right was my way home, and turning a hundred and eighty-degree was my way back to you. I stayed by the post. Hands on my knees, panting. I watched the cars pass as the drivers seemed to tease for knowing where to go. Newton’s third law of motion states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so I took those two, then three steps back, and turned to walk my way again to your front door.
I could walk in that direction forever. I was a prion if there was ever a good one. In science, this treacherous misfolded protein causes fatal diseases by getting in contact with normally folded ones, causing them to misfold. I thought there is nothing more benign than wanting love contact. When it radiates outside our bodies, every meeting is a chance at love. The scientists have yet to understand the phenomenon behind the touch-and-misfold just as I never fully knew what love encompassed for it to have a language of itself, only that we are not simply witnesses but participants in it.
We are awake in the azure windy afternoon this place wraps us as we meet. The sunlight leaking through leaf spaces finds its way to your arm which welcomes me from the porch. The chatter from inside comes to a close. Love is in that silence before once again we are teenagers laughing at our nervousness and continuing with our stories. I know I won’t remember every story, save perhaps the one from two years ago when I got drunk for wanting it. But I will remember the laughter— our voices becoming matter: occupying space, having mass. All at once, here and there, together.
Love keeps us moving. Somewhere nonfiction it was Wangari Maathai revolutionizing planting peace trees and somewhere fiction is Liesel Meminger giving a beautiful weather report to Max who will never again see the light of day. Here we are making burritos and balloons and exchanging smiles and sweet nothings. Our arms dancing their own disco over the table, over the pool. The combination of laughter and chatter is the love language we’re glad to be fluent in. Even if the world is at least half-terrible like Maggie Smith said, I believe when she added we could make this place beautiful. The simplest gesture of rotating a mug so the handle faces you as you reach for it amounts to something, doesn’t it? That by the end of the day the accumulation of these actions would make the terrible parts reduced to at least a quarter.
There is always a moment of detachment to the moment when I think the half-terrible parts are taking place near and far from here, and it will catch up to us, and tomorrow you’ll be somewhere and I’ll be somewhere else too. But something gentle like a tap connects me to this proximity where for now I wouldn’t have to wonder.
When love triumphs once again, love is still the reason we stayed. It binds us here and in the recalling. Isn’t it what nostalgia is made of? A conglomeration of languages love has been that up to now still appeals to our sentimentalities. History is ever-present. I drink the cold water you fetched for me and I’m back to two decades ago at the dentist with my mother when I thought I heard the sound of death if it has one after the drilling of something molar in me began. That’s how I discovered what anesthesia meant. Back then I defined it as my mother’s big hands giving a home to my small hands. Meanwhile it means a shot glass full of memories, and moments about to be. There is crying too, but what are tears made of? We sing and tire until the quiet lulls the clamor into sleep and you tell me love is also the reason you are here. A confession that makes an almost full moon all the more beautiful, and being together in the witnessing.
Love is in the noticing. Too often I shy from the subject afraid I might narrow it in ways it shouldn’t be when all I want is to zoom in and find it in places otherwise unnoticed and actions otherwise ignored. It’s in the ennui of dishwashing when I gain the time to think regardless if they are delightful reflections or a mere unending to-do list. It was in the horizontal sky between ours and the neighbor’s roof where I saw Venus two twilights ago. In the crevice near the post, I almost missed a flower growing between. In a laundry store, I passed by a teenage boy carrying a bag to help his father. In the messages I receive happiness is celebrated and hardships are comforted. It’s in a book community where social media isn’t so bad a place to be. It’s in every movie night, buddy read, shared midnight snacks, exchange of memes. It’s in the mornings spent with no one but a sparrow on a wire that flew beyond my view. It’s an abundance more that isn’t here and I am ashamed to be narrowing it down because love is all the time.
When the night dissipates into the rush of farewell mornings my thoughts find their way into the sweetness of February as I rest my back on the cocoon swing and think of all the love that finds me here.
On the last page of this book I’m holding I wrote a question, “What motivates my choices?” But I have always known. It is this energy that can neither be created nor destroyed, only ever-transforming. The energy that is never at rest and always motions me away from the dead end.
Love is wherever. Even with a closed door where behind it is only one of us left. I thought in doing so I am abandoning love there, twisting the knob with the slightest force so the latch won’t click and wake you. But I carry it with me wherever I go. We only leave our trace; love only multiplies. Love never arrived because it never left in the first place. You are someone and I am someone else too. Until we meet anew.
Until we sing and tire again.
Feb 17, 2022 17:27
February didn't arrive without a warning. It was careful at first. It was planning and gathering resource materials for a dream. It was still doubt and wonder how to flip it. It was Neil Gaiman's voice telling me to find my own. Mostly reassuring I have my own. Watching the sun burn the clouds I can almost feel the heat in my eyes. If Moses parted the red sea there was the moon parting the pink clouds, or did they make way for her? It was primroses in aquarelle. It was vegetable salad with apples while holding a book that I knew would break me for the second time. It was reading books and watching documentaries that challenge me and hurt me at the same time. It was keeping in touch with loved ones. It was conversations and telling them how taking care of yourself first is never selfish. It was sharing with a confidant our little successes in life, both knowing "little" isn't really little in value. It was love letters and a self-made painting for a gift. It was making mistakes at work and not beating myself up for it. It was writing a fictive story and tears reading it because I miss my lola. What I mean to say is, I had the best half of February I haven't had in years, because I am learning to love myself better, and it radiates into people by loving them better too. And that is probably the most romantic feeling I have ever felt.
When I wrote this last year, I thought I’d share it by the end of February; I always loved writing about the passing of months. But when the Ukraine-Russia war escalated, I just couldn’t bring myself to. While watching the sky that day, I remember being hurt by its hues— its pinks and blues— knowing somewhere the sky was grayed and my pain was nothing compared to those of parents hugging their children and children with both coloring books and blood on their arms and couples holding hands fearing it may be their last. When a journalist named Natalia Gumenyuk said she did not immediately call her family who was sleeping because she wanted to prolong the peace for them, I kept recalling what Viktor Frankl wrote about seeing a fellow inmate having nightmares, and, upon waking him up, withdrew his hand, frightened at the thought of summoning the man to the real worst nightmare of his life. Over and over I heard Hanji from Attack on Titan say, “You can’t rob people of their violence.” Over and over it was the siren. I couldn't bring myself to the balcony the next day.
Somehow I made it to the office days after and I remember it felt odd how life carried on seemingly normally when it wasn't. When there was a baggage of sorrow you carry within and none of the people you talk to could even see how your body slouched with all the weight. Though I knew it was the same for them, that we were all flattened and to survive the day was to pretend to be impervious.
These are the half-terrible parts I keep feeling powerless over, and sometimes there is guilt in moving forward and finding little joys despite the collective grief that overshadows all of it.
Like the February love note last year I almost kept this letter to myself. All the unlovely things swam in my head which made the continuing difficult. The earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the climate crisis, illnesses, personal ones, and unannounced ones among many others. I can go on and on but I won’t because maybe the least we can do is make this place more livable in our own ways even if it weighs heavier some days.
For every calamity there is a rescuer, and for every place ruined there are millions of people who extend their hands to aid in the rebuilding. Maybe we just have to believe that in everything we do we’re doing the best we can. To keep participating. To grieve and still laugh and celebrate love. To keep the love in motion in all ways always, not in spite but most especially.
After all, love is the reason why we’re still here.
this is so beautiful ❤️