What Is Love?

This piece was written in 2019 as an exercise. At first it was an attempt to find a new style, but then I fell into a rhythm of describing an emotion in the simplest way possible. It was also a writing challenge where I created a word bank of random words that I was obligated to use throughout the piece...however I wanted. I had recently read an article about Kindergarteners who were taught a poetry course and the way their creativity was limitless. Compared to the fifth graders who were taught the same course, the younger students took a more "unhinged" approach, exploring odd oxymoron’s because within their minds, preconceived notions of what existed and what did not was foreign. I tried to think about love as though I were describing it for the first time.

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Note that love is different for every person you come across, but after reading responses of what these little kids thought love was, I knew that my notion of “love” was misconstrued
Mary was a 4-year-old girl who said that love was when you told someone you liked their shirt succeeding that moment they'd wear it every day.
My interpretation of love was never so simple, but when I thought about how much I loved my partner I tried to reimagine the simpler ways that he and I showed it.
Love was when I told him I loved the smell of his cologne and he would spray it on randomly and later reach across my face for something.
Love was when I would ask him if he wanted water and he would say no, but I would get him some anyways.
Love was when he took the first bite of my food to make sure it was not poisoned.
Love was the thing that made me smile while alone and tired.
Love was when he would turn left on the road and he ask me if he was “good right” and I always checked.
Love was him knowing my favorite type of pizza, and how I liked extra packets of pepper.
It was knowing I don’t like sweets (unless it had nuts in it).
It was holding me even after I had cried for getting mad at him over how much I loved him. So much so it made me upset.
I do not think that everyone’s love is the same, but it made me think more of love than just holding him tight and missing him when he’s gone.
This little girl had a better concept of love than I ever had, but it made me realize I didn’t need to die to show my love, or see it, and rather that it had been in the little things all along.

Quiet Please

We fill the voids of silence with sounds that can be called words, called conversation. To me it just sounds like noise.

If the tail end of my sentence falls with the intonation of gentility and quiet, I expect to receive just that. Introspection is peaceful, and often my mind can get clouded and begin a silent meditation and when it is interrupted with more speech, more words, I lose the thought. There is a version of me which exists only within my head and it's calm there, the peaceful place within my own body: a temple. This mind palace has halls and corridors which I explore with a trailing hand, grazing the walls with curiosity, peaking around each corner with anticipation. Something stops me from opening the next door...

"And where did you grow up?"

I pull the answer from a different part of my brain and try not to outwardly sigh. Respond. Talking again, having a conversation and I find my face forcing a smile, my hands moving enthusiastically, my chest breathing out what sounds like a laugh. I finally catch up to my body and fill in the gaps. Instead of seeing myself from an internal perspective...the inside looking out, I take up the space where the external version of me exists. Here I begin to see through my eyes and not from the side stage of my peripherals. It's like I'm split into two: the intangible and the visceral. Within is where I find comfort, yet I simultaneously desire the mere pleasure of losing myself within someone else.