Survival Loving:
A man once told me
“You can’t live your life off of kisses
you can’t feed your belly with joy”
I told him I didn’t agree
He said
“Working hard is necessary
and arguments are inevitable”
I wished for him to see loving lives within whimsy
When I told him to spend the night
that he could find rest in me
He told me
“Cuddling doesn’t pay the bills
and money doesn’t grow on trees”
The first night we walked together, the shoreline reflected the stars, glowing plankton speckled the sand and made the water glitter. We trekked upon the sky, foamy waves kissing our feet. There is no line between the water and the heavens while the gestures of the universe paint bold and complete strokes on a nonexistent horizon. The nature of their bond, cycling in and out of each other is one of the few permanent phenomena I can imagine. The sky needs the water and the water is replenished by sky. In the night, it is unquestionable what being whole feels like, the knowledge of coming together becomes inherent. It exists as a knowing that two is always one.
If you listen, the waves don’t crash, they *hush*. A release of air from the lung, a breath out which is easily absorbed in moistened air.
*Hushhhhh*
It is an eternal sound. One that exists to expand, only from what has collapsed.
I don’t want to like you too much. I can feel the trust settling in and with it, the clenched jaw and aching shoulders of a woman braced for impact. Loving should feel easy, I know. It does feel simple, nothing to overthink between us two I suppose, but my throat closes up, and my eyes sink, as if trying to hide behind my cheekbones, as I await the betrayal.
I told you the other day, “When I’m 90 years old, I’ll likely have 90 cats” as we joked about my incessant adoption of animals I strip from the streets.
You told me it’s better off if we just have two. A pair, so they can keep each other company. Hmmm, company.
We? A word I didn’t expect to hear of the future you imagine while I mindlessly pondered the plausability of 90 cats roaming a piece of farmland. Your mind wandered to 70 years together, my soul quietly smiled at your willingness to imagine a forever, I remember when it felt that easy too. A memory that makes the heart burn, lungs tighten, hands tense as I am reminded of all my forgotten forevers. The collections of empty promises I have stacked in the pages of notebooks, stories of the people who told me I was to be cherished, but showed me they didn’t know how.
No love is ever a loss, and I mean that whole-heartedly. It is time for growth, for learning to understand ourselves through a new person’s eyes, through their touch, through their breath, through their hush. Loving should never hurt. When it does, it is no longer love. Love is so easily replaced by “control” by “jealousy” and by “pain”. All of these feelings that leave footprints next to yours on sandy shores, masked only by the dark, within the ease of oneness.
My body only knows false titles. The kind of “loving” that stings, that breaks, that hits, that takes, that drains. The kind that claims that control is the mechanism for loving, that compromise of the self is somehow going to bring us closer. I know now that it doesn’t, that it won’t. Loving is seeing, not hiding. Loving is being, not dying. The right person doesn’t make you want to sacrifice your life for them, but rather live your life better than you ever have before.
The first night we walked together with feet in the stars. There was no clear horizon in sight, just us floating on water’s edge.
*Hushhhh* whispered the sea to my forgetten forevers.
*Hushhhh* seeped into the the back of my skull, gently luring my eyes out of hiding.
*Hushhhh* caressed my skin with sea mist.
*Hushhhh* let me see you.