on understanding love

can i hold the hand of something that will not hold back?

Love: I know her as the axis on which the earth conducts its greatest symphony. The human body would have no structure nor progression without it; two thumping hearts look at another, and they applaud with a field of gravity that no science knows, and they fold into each other, interchangeable. And then comes the byproduct, born warm and clenching fists that resemble the heart beneath the thin skin of its chest. And the byproduct marches on, carrying all the scraps of love until it weaves a quilt with the help of another. It is a cycle as fragile as the weather; it belongs to the clouds, and to the rain, and to the sun, and to the storms in the fissures.

I am a byproduct, and my pockets are stuffed with the scraps of a quilt. They are threadless, fluttering, seeking a point to be tethered but finding none. I have collected them since birth and held them up to the sun, but the sky is silent. On another shore of the world, it storms, and on another, the sunlight bleaches bones with its anger–yet mine remains silent.

When I open my novels, the pieces of my quilt tremble. When I read the words love, darling, beloved, they have learned to remain silent. When I sit in the dark with music and hear the words dear, lover, honey, they come in hollow shapes. I ask the clouds: will you teach me the shapes? They never respond, but in some places they twitch into smiles, and in others, into frowns.

To be loved is to be understood. To love is to understand, by extension. But there is a tangible reality to understanding; to barter emotions, to exchange the threads of a mind, to hold hands under the same scarlet umbrella. Love–the hands that will weave my own quilt–waits behind a wall, and keeps all of my great novels and films and music with it. It leaves me bare cracks; I may understand this page, or this scene, but we cannot touch yet.

This morning, I am a girl with a world of scraps and no thread. I have a needle, but no pins to hold the fabric together. I have learned to watch others pace a gray street with their own–some with quilts, some fluttering in an absence of company. I have learned to watch the wall, and to understand the cracks. I have learned to listen to the symphony behind it, and to wait for the scuffling of feet, to know if a seat has been placed for me.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hi lovely people! currently drinking a matcha and watching the foot traffic on broadway. good way to start a morning. never having been in a relationship before is something that i struggle with, and in certain ways, gives “love songs” and “love stories” a hollow shape to me. when reading literary fiction, especially, i find myself asking why the depth of the story seems shallow. love, i’ve found, is a difficult thing to understand when i’ve never met her before. in short, consider this a professional ramble. i hope a few of you will relate to it. happy sunday <3