In which my days are filled with four-letter words.
This is not a love song.
Not just one, anyway. There are always more than one love song. Some bitter, some sweet. Some sad, some naïve. Full of sorrow and full of teeth. These love songs bite, no matter how innocent they may seem. You have lived through them too, you know you have.
Listen.
…
I don’t think we’ll ever figure out what this Love thing is, with all its secret histories and hydra-headed temptations, its rise and fall as though the Roman Empire could cycle over and over. All those scandals, all that decadence, all that needless suffering. We never learn, not really. And that’s what makes it exciting.
Love is not meant to be a diamond ring, finally attained through courtship and calamities, through all the desolation and the drama, only to be worn upon one’s finger and left at that. Mission accomplished. But what’s next? No, love isn’t meant to be a stagnant bed some of us call marriage.
Love is meant to be passionate, driving us into daily tosses of inanities and insanities. All is full of love, Björk Guðmundsdóttir once sang, and how true! how magnificent! Were we to fill each minute and segment of our days and our lives with unequal desire and depth, to hang our hearts on our sleeves and our cuffs and the tips of our eyelashes, to seduce and saunter, to lord over our husbands like lions, to wed our wives over and over, as if each confession of fidelity could be furthered. Oh! let us honour all of this in song!
…
Every movie we watch is a new one. Let’s have 50 first movie dates and then watch 50 more. Let’s watch the whole galaxy of films and then watch them geeky director’s cuts together. Promise me that.
I’ll always buy you popcorn and I’ll always clumsily spill some onto your lap, if only to pretend to swipe them away as I hunt in the dark to grab your hand in mine. I love your jumping in your seat and pulling me close (we should watch more horror flicks) and how I can look into your eyes staring at the screen like a newborn child seeing something for the first time and I am that child too, looking at you.
…
Strange thing is, we don’t need words anymore these days, whether in your tongue or mine, we speak clearly and patiently enough from the heart, as my fingertips traipse over the familiar territory of your skin and yours get lost in the dark tresses of my hair.
Words aren’t meaningless; it’s just that even without words, we never mean any less.
…
Do you long for me to recite verses of love to you? I fear my memory may fail me, but trust me, my dear, when words are forgotten and lost, I still know my way back to you. In this life, in dreams, always. I can only escape to you.
(I will pen no lines of beauty but for you. There is no beauty but you.)
…
You can see it in my eyes. I’m missing you already.
You wish you had cancelled this trip after all. I wish I had said to hell with work and gone with you instead.
How do I tell you that I come home at night and I sleep now on your side of the bed? I don’t know why I do it but it has your warmth somehow. (And I imagine, a couple of time zones away, you are doing the same, and we are connected. We are together again.)
…
These cold sheets do not hold your scent, these mirrors do not hold your smile in the morning. I eat take-out, the contents do not matter. I miss your cooking. I miss shopping for the ingredients with you. I miss just walking past you and leaning forward simply to smell you. You smell so good. You are a wonder, baby; how did I ever get this lucky?
My suitcase is packed. The plane ticket snug in my pocket. There is a taxi waiting to take me to the airport. I’m coming home, baby, even if I have to fly all through the night. I’m coming home.
…
Sometimes silence is better but it’s damning too. Lonely are two people in the same room feeling blue. There is no sun when neither turns to see the other smile.
And yet this night passes when you leave it for awhile. We forget our fight (whatever it was, who really cares?) and the ray of light that comes (and it will, I swear) lifts the sadness, erases the pain. We only remember the joys, not the stains.
We make our bed and we lie in it gladly. Every finger curled into its partner, holding tight, drawing close. Our breaths form, meet and fade away. Earlier, when our arrows were flying, we awaited one another to end it first, with an “As you please”, a “Suit yourself”, a “Whatever.” It means I don’t wanna argue any more, I don’t wanna talk. Harsh and hot, a fever, a pair of tempers, a pair of tempests.
Fast-forward and now we are next to each other, and our smiles return, our gentle snoring bliss. Once more we believe we will forever walk. This path we’ve made. As you please me, as I suit you, whatever comes, let it come. Ain’t no battle we can’t overcome, ain’t no war that could leave us numb. Not while this furnace burns with our fire. This love, this flame. What remains after desire. This love, our flame.
…
I’ve not heard this song before. It’s lovely. You stand up and start to sway to the music. I come to you, wrap my arms around you, and we slip into a slow dance in place, just our bodies moving, swaying, pressed against each other. I let my head fall against your shoulder, rest it there. I smell your clothes, the perfume that resides in their fibre, that lingers all along your shoulder blade. I turn higher and smell your neck and you smell different here, more sweat and skin, perhaps. Delicious. I sink my nose into your hair, tickling it, and I smell lavender, the shampoo you use, and the night itself. There’s nothing quite like your scent, all your different smells, all wonderful.
And we dance until the song ends. I give you a kiss on your lips and we have smiles in our eyes that are still dancing.
…
A long time ago, I read that one needs to be miserable to create art, to voice out true poetry. Is it easier to write when you’re unhappy? Then I’ll gladly give up my sole talent, if that is what it is, my lone contribution to this world, to spend the rest of my years waking up with you by my side, my dear.
You tell me “I love you” is too easy. Everyone says it. That there needs to be something more, something that wraps all the promises and vows together. But don’t you see? That these three small words are all I have? They are me, they are everything. And if you cannot see beyond their barren brevity, let me hope that over the years that span our life together, these words will lose their maligned mass appeal, and you will know as the days pass, that our love does speak louder than words.
But know you this, it all begins with words, with the Word, with these Three Words: I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
…till it becomes a litany, till it rings truer than true, till your ears are bent to listen, till your eyes open up your heart and see what this is. I love you.
Damn it, I do.
When all was dull and worthless, you came and gave me the breath of life. Let us carry this breath, till we are old and spent and when there is naught left for us to give, let us leave together, let us carry this breath till there is no breath left to breathe.
…
These are love songs. For the one who always inspires them.