The Truth About Love

By

Don’t demand me to define what the significance to love someone is. Perhaps, I throw the word love away like they were the keys in the love lock bridges, abundant as it seems, but no one throws them back.

Love is a feeling I have always fathomed as something that is omnipresent. Not once did I believe in money making the world go round, but I believed it was love that keeps us all to keep moving forward, keep the world dancing in cumbersome circles. We love the sun so much we swivel around it. It loves us back enough to embrace us with the gravity it has and keep us from gyrating into the deep fissure of space, from clashing with other heavenly bodies. I think the Earth fell in love with the fickle moon a long time ago that I refused to let it go. Their mutual love for each other keeps the tides rolling, making the oceans snivel when time comes when the moon has to vanish for a moment. Once upon a time, the sun fell in love with the moon that day after day he chases after her, knowing he will never be able to catch her. Love is why, in beauteous and evocative synchronization with the Earth, we crane our necks in tandem with the ground beneath our feet in order to drink in the sparkling stars, the languorous nebulae, endless skies.

For years, there has been a struggle to find this elusive marine mollusk, this champion’s prize of life. This is my lost treasure, the faded blue heart-shaped seashell. I gave my all, I did my very best to find it and keep it in my hands but love is a glutinous creature that bites and scrapes, fickle and changes its mind. It grows prostrate and weary, the firefly that flickers in and out of light. The expedition towards it is persecuted with dangers: false prophets dressed with shining armor or extravagant dresses that guide you in vicious misdirection, the twisted forms of nefarious that will give you things to take just like being given by an apple in the middle of the forest by weird hag, the broken hearts that’s scattered around the place and the miles of distance you have to walk until you’re tired feet bring you to where you and he will meet.

Please, do not ask me to define love.

I’m the type who does not know what it is because I recognize it all too well and fall in love three times when I see the sun rises and five when I read poetry. I fall in love with the silence of that space between sleeping and waking, the moment that blurs on the border between the darkest hour of night and the first light of dawn. I fall in love with the way people walks to the streets, wearing the best of their best and walk without noticing other people’s business. I fall in love with the green spirit of Mother Nature in the garden of Ms. Ainsworth two blocks away from home, the city lights that looks beautiful but cold; I fall in love with ugly urban cities— love it for all its derelict, citified decay. I love its unhurried atavism.

I happen to be in awe of people, too. I love the old man who bought her little kid a new toy by the department store. I love the boy in the corner of the rooftop when I see him closing his eyes, surrendering to the melody he is making. I love the mother when she calls her child that nickname only they share. I love it when people are kind and loving, and sweet and caring. I love it when I see their faces when they realize that they are important piece of a big big puzzle, a cog in the machine that is secretly named the world. I love it when someone sad or hurt felt home or comfortable by my company or by just a simple embrace; just a reminder that the pain they are experiencing will sooner be gone. I love them when they need a little bit of a reprieve from the hopelessness that pervades the very air we breathe. I love seeing people at their worst because I can tell that they are holding their guard down and they finally letting me in and I want to hug their soul and make them feel that there are a lot of things to be happy about and that they are not alone on what they are experiencing. I love them at their best and at their worst for people are just melancholic souls, fidgety feet and mawkish hearts that beat in unison with the first heartbeat of the new born baby, the choir that sang to the bottom of their hearts and the air that lets us breathe every single second.

There’s a lot of question that boggled the mind of some people. Is that not what love is? Is love supposed to be kind? Is love supposed to go above and beyond the ordinary, the boring and go borderline insane? It should be infuriated with the right amount of lust and zeal, fueled by hope and everlasting passion.

Lovers should understand that love is never constant but that lovers should, like monkeys in the trees that are interlaced, holding fast and have an impending and decisive fear of losing and letting go.

Don’t ask me to define what the significance to love someone is. Do not ask me what is love because I know its different faces, forms, hues and tragedies. Do not ask me about love because each one is different, and each one is uniquely yours.