Love is…

Love is passion, emotion. Love is a kiss, love is holding hands as you walk. Love is a caress on the shoulder when things have not gone well. Love is a gentle squeeze of the arm when it is a perfect night, sitting on a blanket, relaxing under the stars, thinking of nothing, experiencing the peace of time together.

Love is a kiss, soft as the warm summer breeze, lifting the fall of hair from off your temple. Love is the weight of the world’s cares fading into the background of the cicadas, as you stare at your lover’s eyes and wish you could dive into and never return. Love is temporary, but powerful. Love is the way you think about another, not only how you act, and not only how you think but how you talk. How you breathe. How you lie still.

Love is waiting. Love is caution. Love is tentative steps forward, as you wonder just what it is you’ve gotten yourself into. Love is hoping; praying? Demanding, begging. Pleading. Asking, and waiting for an answer.

Love is accepting that answer, even when it is not the one you want to hear. Especially when it is not the one you wanted to hear.

Love is asking again. And hearing the same answer. And asking yet again, and hearing even more of the same. Love is perseverance, faithfulness. Love is patience. As much as it is a virtue, at times it is a burden, too. Move on? Not from love. Forget about her? Never, with love. Pretend you are better off without him? Impossible once love has reared its head between you two.

Love is a dance. Occasionally you lead – you direct the path of the other. At times you follow – she knows how to navigate the paths surrounding. Most of the time, though, there is a mutual uncertainty, a parallel discovering of what might be – what was – what we wish would never be again. Most of the time, it is this trepidation, this fear, this unknown and unknowable that leads both into the maze of emotion, of feeling, of give and take, of, frankly, heartbreak.

Love is there. It is here. It is invisible and impossible to ignore at the once. It is inviolable and irrefutable and ignorant and naive and bullheaded and wistful and selfish and destructive and violent and soft, gentle, a rain on a daisy. Love is true, and false. Love is patient and impulsive. Love rushes forward, and then hits the brakes hard. Love tears down, builds up, encourages and demeans. Love is in all, and through all, and absent from the void. Love is…

Love is not. It is the great everything and the miniscule nothing. Love is? No. We are. We are. We may love, but love is not. We are. We. Us.