Is this love? I am trying hard -- sometimes minute by minute, at other times a whole day might go past -- to put her down, put her wrapped in my tortured feelings down gently but firmly on a shelf or, better still, in a cupboard with a door which can be closed. Out of sight, out of heart.
It's like pulling teeth. Part of me I didn't know I had screams and tries to hold tight every time I manage to surrender her. I remind myself over and over like a prayer, she is just human, she is not divine, she is merely human, full of known and unknown flaws and frailties, hurts, absences. She is not divine. And though my head knows this to be true, and I put her away repeatedly, something of me is locked away with her behind the closed door. It hurls itself against the lock. It quickens my breathing. It screams in my face. It will not surrender.
I want to love and to love others. Gently. Patiently. To reflect their goodness or brilliance or gentleness or hope or whatever fragment of godliness they possess back at them. And to wave softly across infinite time and space, my god to their god, fanning flames, rekindling my own, too.
And I think this dichotomy comes from love, ceaselessly hungry to multiply itself, expand itself, seep outwards and inwards like the tide, leaving its mark on our beaches where debris is flung, stealing it back sometimes, wiping us clean, so the shore, our hearts, our souls are ever-changing, ever the same, unaware of the moon, waiting for water and the salt of tears which tell our tongues yes, this is love, this is pain, be glad of it.
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