Where To Fall In Love
By Thoughtis
You can fall in love in a grocery store, all high on domesticity and mundanity because here’s this blinding, fluorescent place you dreaded as a child; you roamed it in hopes that it’d become more interesting; you fixated on what it had to offer and you stole the things you could not have but now you’re here with the right person and you don’t feel compelled to throw fits. You feel compelled instead to think of breakfast in bed, you feel compelled to stand in the produce aisle and put on a fresh face and squeak, “Pick me, pick me. I’m ready.”
Fall in love in a moving vehicle; take comfort in knowing the hands that steer the wheel are hands that you’re safe in; capable hands that will protect you and hold you and tease the tips of your hair when you ask politely; or maybe fall in love with the image in the rearview mirror and wish it were much, much closer than it appears. Fall in love in the backseat with your legs entwined, your heads in laps, sky and road passing behind the two of you thoughtlessly like there’s nothing else to see here and just beg this ride not to end.
Inside of a song, that might be a nice location. Your ears and the space between them translating C Majors and B Naturals as they bleed into your systems; your gaze locking over shared words that neither of you have been able to articulate up until now, up until this. Let someone else do the talking while you both do the listening, the staring, the touching. Reach for the dial and turn it up louder and louder and louder.
Maybe fall in love all new age in a place the naked eye can’t see, through networks and phone lines, through wires and currents. Connect through the cables; technology exists to make this easier you know, so just poke and like and love and figure out the logistics some other time.
Or you could try ‘underneath the stars’ for once — just hear me out. Because no one wants to explain to their friends over lunch, no one wants to sit their children down one day and tell them, “We fell in love beneath the open sky.” It sounds convenient and fabricated and like the mark of a love that won’t last, you know? What, with the whimsicality of it all. But try it, anyway. Because the point is that no one can predict or control the where and the when, no one can construct the meeting of eyes and the moment of recognition; no one can set the alarm that wakes the both of you up — it just doesn’t work like that. So give the stars a chance, maybe they won’t let you down.