What is love?

A warm word filled with one’s raw, unrefined emotions,

Though simple and silent and direct,

Singular and common,

But felt and heard and known.

 

Love is in the way you walk towards me,

Audible in the way you look for me on busy streets,

Palpable in the way you pour water for me.

It sneaks up in the way you detail your narrations to me,

Spills into the restlessness of your shaking leg,

It demystifies in the flutter of your lashes,

Ambushes in your mind-reading instincts for me,

It is authentic in the way you let the rain assault your shoulder

while sheltering me from it wholly,

Thriving in your cinnamon body scent.

 

From the unabashedness of catching two men holding pinkies together,

To the mystique of a couple at a psychic,

With memories gregarious to the music ringing in one’s ears.

It infuses in the filament of hope to hear from a long lost lover,

In grieving loss together,

Blossoming in the licking of the underbelly of the spoon while

gorging on some chocolate ice cream,

Love is the calm you feel in knowing that you’re okay losing someone. 

 

Love is wildly serious and implicitly fallible.

It is solitary and whimsical,

Defensive and mechanical,

A pursuit and an irony,

Friction and silk, all at once,

Mortifying and theatrical,

Rebellious and feral, yet elegant,

Love is original.

Sometimes one is happy in one’s ignorance.