the conversation of love
stories with no beginning or end
Before I loved you, I loved your words. And then I loved the way you walked down the street. And then I loved you at 9pm outside the grocery store when we were tired and annoyed but you drove out to get washing powder. And the sentences of love became so long and so detailed, I stuffed it all into the term you so that I could haul it all along with me wherever I went. And then the term became singular, monopolised by your constellation, there was no substitution. We fought in the hallway outside the apartment, and I loved you. We waited too long to talk about the future, and I loved you. That term which was load bearing over many days until it collapsed in on itself, and I said, well, I don’t even know you.
But before that, we walked out into the night on the observatory hill, the air was cold and black like a bible. The collar of your coat was up to your ears, your hands in your pockets, which made me want to embrace you. I was quick to laughter - my head was full of feathers, easily tickled. We looked at the stars and had a terrible time of guessing the constellations they were so we made them up. The briefcase. The coffee cup. A donkey!
Looking at the stars, I felt that the future was not a distant place I had to get to, but that its atoms were already permeating everything, like the star dust in me, prior conditions ready to be articulated into its next conclusion, until they break apart again seeking a new form. I nestled into the side of your coat and fell asleep, absently wondering what we were about to be articulated into.
The next day, I remembered having a dream. I grasped at it quickly like catching a firefly, and I told it to you and you listened and found it interesting because you loved me. When I told you about the birds in my dream, the next week, your dream had birds too.
It was thrilling to feel that we now had so much more space to roam, through the fields of the other’s imagination. You inquired into mine, which was full of flowers and rows of warmly lit windows, and I inquired to yours, which was full of mythical heroes and elaborate constructions. We first flew over the other’s world, surveying and appraising, and then started to set foot in it, delighted and shocked at how different it looks and feels from the ground looking up, how large and daunting its structures, how alien its undulating landscapes.
Our language was a stream, the constant babble into the ear of the other, that now has diverged. My opinions which were once pliant to yours springing back into their natural shapes, and the others that held steadfast guard at the gate of our differences starting to relax again. Who I am now is a confusing but pointless preoccupation, compared to what I have loved and have to share.
We will now encounter each other in ordinary situations, sidestep the gaping hole between us. One day in the future, you will drive me to the airport, and I will be grateful, and we will ask nothing more of each other, because I know how I had failed you and you know how you had failed me, and we keep our failings to ourselves, and it will be perfect, and complete.
Where do the sentences of love start? I think they begin with a question. Where do they end? I do not know if they ever. I only find someone else to say them to.
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