Fresh Flowers

Love is not guaranteed. It’s barely even felt. bell hooks said it best when she said a lot of us confuse care with love. How many of us have done this? That is why when love comes for you, you need to drench in it. Make it hot, sticky, honey out of it. Let it consume you, in its waves, in its depth, in its ability to teach patience. When love is in your grasp, you have beaten death at its own game, shown the universe that it means something to exist in a planet orbiting a star, floating in the many infinite possibilities of all of this going wrong.

And yet, here you are, here we are. I do not take the gift of love lightly. Treat it like a serious craft, and allow it to make a fool of yourself.

You only ever get better at something by doing it repeatedly.

And now a poem.

I have spent my entire life looking for this feeling:
A raging fire subdued by your stare.
A lingering sense of place, between your lips.
The smell of fresh flowers and tonight's dinner.

I had not lost hope, it just seemed to be taking its time:
A life in eternal chrysalises, destroying myself
over and over and over and over and over and over
and and...

Then

Patience, the hardest of lessons.
waiting with a heavy heart.
Hand in hand
with who I wish I were, and you.

This love.
I am transformed by it, without notice, without want.
My fire consumed
Ashes as memory
I spread them, little by little,
to always remember
who I was, and that I am
who I always wanted to be, because of a kiss, a glance,
and a promise: your love.