LOVE
Love. (von Madleen Dröhne)
It comes in all shapes and forms, really.
Defining it is not so easy. In fact, there’s thousands of definitions; all for this one single word.
The thing is… I don’t think a million sentences will ever be able to capture this feeling.
Love.
It’s your friends waiting up for you on the sidewalk as you tie your shoelaces.
It’s a lover’s gentle touch to your hand, stroking the back of it with their thumb as if these hands were made for it, as if the way your palms mold together was meant to be. It’s the way someone holds the door open for you when your hands are full, when you know you’d be just a second too late to slip through. The knowing smile sent your way as you wiggle past them with a sheepish grin.
And it’s the way your mother hugs you. Dotes on you. Ruffles your hair as you step out the door, on your way to see the world for yourself – for the world to see you.
It might as well be her teary gaze the second your first car leaves the driveway of home. Your father sees her eyes grow distant, the outline of your car on the horizon getting smaller and he knows, he knows she’s thinking back to when she was the one sitting in that drivers seat at barely 18 years old.
Hate.
A few years back – in science class, to be precise – we learned that you can never “gain cold“. You can only have an absence of heat. It made me think that maybe hatred doesn’t exist. That maybe, just maybe, there’s only an absence of love (Quote by lowkeat on Tumblr).
There’s that old, mean geezer who never fails to raise his fist as soon as you step foot onto his lawn. Maybe that’s because it was once his beloved granddaughter playing on that very same grass, lost to an accident way too soon.
In the house next door, there’s the yelling of a woman; the crying of a boy. “It’s none of my business“, you think as you walk by. And when that young boy goes to school, he throws the chalk and steals the lunchbox because his mother never packs him one. There’s boiling water that was once a comforting warmth, a calm ocean that gave way to raging waves and an unrelenting storm, once a soothing breeze that tickled your nose.
It might just be the barely visible softening of a cruel pair of eyes when the stray cat grazes against calloused hands, purring all the same.
Grief.
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot.
Grief is just love with no place to go (Quote by Jamie Anderson).
It’s the unsteady beeping of a heart monitor. The shrill cry of a flatline on the screen. The surgeon’s once steady hands shake for just the fraction of a second, then lower at his sides. Parents weep, colleagues pat his back in passing as they move on to another patient. The surgeon walks down the white, sterile halls. A stuttering sigh escapes his lips from under the mask. Fists tighten in their pockets, eyes downcast.
It’s an elderly woman sitting alone on a wooden bench at church on Christmas Day. Her hair is gray and her fingers tremble with each turn of the page. She flashes you a gentle, reminiscing smile that resembles the subtle sparkle of her wedding band as you turn back around in your seat. The space next to her has long since been empty.
It’s the way this unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat and in that hollow part of your chest. Pushing and pulling. Tearing. Shaking and sobbing. Despairing.
Love.
Caving and building. Saving. Mending and repairing. Unending.
A green leaf dancing through the breeze. Time passes, and it turns yellow, sometimes red, then brown. It’s frail. It changes, adepts. It’s weightless, but the leaf is so very heavy with importance all the same. A dog watches it fly by curiously, then makes his way back to the familiar voice that’s calling out to him – for him to come back. He does so with a wagging tail and trusting eyes, into the arms of the kid that has become his home. Parents stand by, spectators of life, guiding hands in times of need. Knowing smiles exchanged between each other. Desires freed.
Above the scene, a lush cloud traversing the sky. Somewhere else, the scent of oranges in the air. A sip of warm tea and your favorite song playing on the radio.
It comes in all shapes and forms, really. What an all-encompassing feeling this is. Love.