Love and tears

So I don't believe in love. Don't really think I should be advocating it. Not in the he loves, she loves kind of vein. So when she reappears, un-erasable it is not love but something else. Still, I listen to love songs, read about it in books. Heartbreaking. I am moved. I look at art. I hug. I kiss. I feel the harsh fist of something in my chest and I know what the the romantics would say about this. Care plus sex. A heady mix of chemicals unbalancing me. I would call it love if I were so inclined. I would convince myself. It would be easy enough. It is the way I tear up. The hormonal wash. I am getting old and softening.

obsessions

It is not the love. Obsession comes from within. Some vital thing missing and the potential to fill the gap with someone else. The need to feel better about yourself. The glimpse of something you have always wanted to be. A scrap of talent that makes you feel forever inferior.

And so you covet.

The physical comes after. The physicality is the usual thing. You are used to finding the warm bodies irresistible. This is nothing new. But add to this the terrible emptiness, the lack and there is alchemy.

But do not mistake it for love. The love is there and there is an intersection but it is not the thing that binds you. The love is familial. Recognition of commonality. Obsession comes from a place where something is missing, the need to repair. The love does not come with a sense of urgency. I must unpick it so that I can put it together for myself. I am making this thing from scratch, and each thread must be perfectly placed and perfectly coloured.

erasures

The things that can't be erased sustain us. We pretend to forget but the memories return like wine stains on a carpet. They are in the meat of us. They are like bruising and we imagine that time will fade the livid colour and perhaps it will. Time eases everything from acute to a muted sepia.

I can't imagine that passion will withstand this erosion, but this is the premise that I will begin from. Maybe it is not the specific passion itself, but the idea of passion that is so long lived. We come to this point and there will be a juncture. The intensity of it is about timing, circumstance. I cannot bring myself to call it love. But it lodges physically. It is a disease that settles into our bones, making our legs shake. Eventually we will be worn away by it, but for now it is molten. It pulls focus. A veneer of normality is brittle. This thing will crack it. Passion spilled out all over the place. Like blood. Like ink from that squid I once caught in the night. Noticing the stain of it, only later, in the morning, when the light had come around once more.