Linear divisions

 I love. It is the only thing I really know how to do. Perhaps I am this way because I am fortuned to meet people who carry love with them. Like the stranger I met by the sea one day, reading a copy of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, her tan coming in but not quite yet—the one who helped me watch my large black knitted bag, protecting it from a poodle playing around. I never asked her to. In fact, we never had a conversation; we just smiled so brightly at each other as I arrived; silently, albeit very telepathically.

She was there until I walked out of the waters. She saw me attempt at swimming in deeper currents, and she laughed as it nearly swept me away. She gave me a towel to dry my salt-soaked hair, and I helped her adjust her bikini ties. I looked at her book and I smiled; I picked up mine and she smiled. We spent the evening watching children attempt to float and lovers sneak kisses. We watched a volleyball game, and she gave me some of her canned soda; again, silently.

We spoke little, and really, all she left me with was her name, one that is distant in my memory now, but whose carrier I shall never forget, even if I seek to.

Or that friend who has never complained about my presence yet constant distance. The one who wishes I were a bit more open to respite, more a seeker, not an answerer; less of a helper and more of the helped.

I could go on and on with all the love I have ever experienced. They may sound so grand, as if life has always been love but It hasn’t.  However, it is what I incline towards, so it will always be an unfair equation. For even if the world were to crash and the roads were to be filled with thorns, I would find a way to make it about love.

You see, I love because I wouldn’t know how not to, not when I see so intricately, and curiosity clothes me, not out of spite but fascination. Someone behind the camera once said it was almost untrue of me to always look at people the way I do —like they were my world, as if I was enamored. It was the first time I noticed it myself, and as we looked through the pictures, I could see it  vividly.

Love, to me, is a lot of things, its essence itself is a juxtaposition in the context of life, and perhaps why I am so confident it is the only thing I truly know how to do. It is selfless and selfish, true and false. Passionate and cold. Close, yet far. Mild and wild. Angry, yet calm. It is Interestingly curious , a term I find the most fitting.

So yes I love, in all the different fonts, and the object of my love is everything the world has to offer, 

My family, friends, my city, the stranger I saw once,  the children who run hastily to hug me before my feet touches the floor as I alight from the car, the old woman I wept for, and recently— myself.