Love should feel sturdy. Reliable, steady, within reach. Love is not happenstance, but practice. The power of saltwater is devotion, currents etching pathways through rock. Love is an agreement, together, to show up beneath blue skies and amidst the bleak and dreary gray.
It isn’t always scanning the room for something better. It doesn’t pull away when we falter, when we fail. Love knows how to say sorry first, to extend its hand, to dismantle the barbed wire together. Love seeks to understand, even when it stings to share the room.
Love is an exhale. A favorite sofa, well-worn over the years but, man, sinking into it after a long day feels right. Love is a song that slow the world down, makes you close your eyes, tilt your head back, forget and remember.
Yes. Love is hard work. But that does not mean it should be a fight for your life. Love will not bruise you, not over and over. Love will not leave you feeling lonely in every crowded room. It will not convince you that you should subsist on less. Love has the energy to show up, prioritizes, swells and grows to fill its container.
It will not drop you in the midst of some trapeze trick. It has your back, particularly when it’s hard. Particularly on your heaviest, moodiest day. When your hands shake and your voice breaks. Love is a forehead kiss. Love is a Saturday afternoon call just to see how you’re handling being stuck at home. It is a trip to the pharmacy to grab you medicine and some small surprise.
Love does not punish you with petty silences or sharp-edged jokes. It forgives, it discovers, it adapts. Love discovers your least lovable colors, and it includes them in the portrait it paints of you. As if to say yes, this is you. As if to say yes, I choose this, too.
It hangs the portrait on the wall, points it out with pride to every incoming guest. As if to say this is my home, this is my home.
michael king 