Love is…

Love.

Is.

Two plump cartoon children holding their hearts in their hands, red and shiny.

Two red hearts and a daisy.  That’s what love is.

Or perhaps it is more
like seeing your lover’s chin and thinking “check out that jaw,
in this light he looks a bit like Bruce Willis.” Maybe that’s what love is.

Or perhaps it is in all the beauty in the world. In all of those beautiful things. Sunsets, mountains, clear water, dreams of your love riding a glittering unicorn,  the sound of a pure voice and an acoustic guitar, lights in the dark. Perhaps…

Or perhaps love is found in the forgotten places. In tea drunk, photos pinned to fridges, bellies full of roast chicken, the hum of active kitchen appliances, the caresses you give to the crook of your lover’s knee. In the nothings, the millions of nothings you do for each other. Mustard coloured love, drab and unassuming, modestly clothed in everyday garments.

For you, today, I wish for ALL of love

Shiny red hearts and tea, clean socks and sunbeams, photographs, wild dreams, hours of love for the crooks of your knees, love that gleams. Love that is wrapped in winter wool and only revealed to your one, your chosen one, who peels away each knitted layer to the soft and pale part of you that’s just for them.

Written for the occasion of my best friend’s wedding

If you wish to link to or reproduce this reading please would you credit me, Jess Southwood, as the author. Thanks!

But when we fall
Or when things are wrenched away from lazy hands
We notice how far away we are from where we were
We are not six now
Or twenty six
We do not live in that sweet flat that had the lovely fireplace
Or sleep on the soft flannel sheet that once belonged to your grandfather
We are miles apart
And I am here

The truth is rarely beautiful
Perhaps I am the puppeteer
And pull on other people’s strings
On other people’s things
And they will feel like they were still and I had wrenched and tugged
Or maybe they will believe that I arranged the fall
The sin is mine
And I am hungry Eve, and he’s the wily snake
Oh god
I made myself laugh sharply then
The reference to his snake and my hand, tugging.
Oh, there’s the unlovely truth again.

Everything moves
The woman
Her things
The earth
They were already in motion
But now’s the wrench.
And now’s the time we see
How far away things are from where they were
They are miles apart
And I am here

with scientists’ enthusiasm for
New
we watched it
smoke
and rubbed our hands above it as if expecting warmth.

don’t touch
he said
don’t touch
and my brain was full
of

glittering spikes hanging from austrian roofs/a tongue stuck to a metal pole/ the squeak of  ice between my teeth/ pinkish ears zombie toes cold blinked eyeballs/ splintered diamond pavements/ peas and ice cream and shrink wrapped meat/ swimming pools in january white on white on white/ and every frozen thing i had ever felt or seen or known

in another life
i turn to
old wisdom;
there is no smoke without fire
the earwig whispers
but i know that
smoke
can come from cold things too
and that
cold things
can
still
burn.

Nigel says how lovely it is to see me. He asks about my family, my husband. I mutter things. I’m wretched in the face of their long-time love. He says that it is very hard, being married. It’s very hard. It’s so hard. It’s verydifficultactuallyhideoussomeofthetime hard. And then he says a lovely thing.

It means a lot, this. You don’t know how much it all means right now, but you will.

*

David and I are separating.

*

In trying to tape over the broken places I stuck us together until our hands were bound, our mouths were gagged, our eyes were glued shut, our ears were stuffed up. Hostage to grief and love and obligation.

I once saw a mouse on a sticky board. Gnawed his leg right through. David and I, we’ve allowed our bond to become fleshy and gone to work on it with sharp teeth.

No.

No.

It must not continue as it is now.

We must peel ourselves away from the safety of our misery.

or at least tried to

pushed a pin

in

tried to pierce skin

i was nine.

I bartered with my mother

a clean room for a clean wound

a shiny ball, a sterilised silver stud

the issue of her womb grown

decorated.

I made me whole

or at least tried to

hung gold

from

old holes, lobes

i am fine.

I bartered with my conscience

a full hole for an empty pocket

a shiny plague, a burnished locust earring

the issue of my womb gone

yet I am decorated.

I am Mean. And I want to tell you about it.

I love the way the sea swooshes like a bride’s dress. 

A tiny crab clicked its castanet claws and she flung her arms in the air: “OLÉ!” In an act of supreme bravery, she ate a single cockle and a single mussel. “They are almost delicious” she said.  We drew pictures in the sand. I wrote the names of living children; it seemed an unholy gesture. She chose a heart shaped bucket and a pink spade. Her hair was full of salt. She raged against the bitter injustice of bedtime, mealtime, bath time. Her rage turned the Devon sky dark. My daughter is a rain god.

And one day, my darling, when you come to me filled with self-doubt and sad thoughts I will say to you that when you were four you looked at the sea and said to me that you loved the way it swooshed like a bride’s dress. And I will try very hard not to tell you that I think you are a FUCKING GENIUS, because that seems a little bit MUCH, somehow, to assert that your daughter is a FUCKING GENIUS. But I will remember how, on that day, I whispered it to myself. I whispered ‘fuck me, my four-year-old is a fucking genius’ because such beauty deserves a whispered f-bomb. Such beauty, my darling, is made by you in your lovely brain and all I can do is gape and gasp and say ‘Oh! What a lovely phrase my darling!’ and whisper ‘eff eff eff eff eff eff eff, my girl, my girl, my daughter, eff eff eff eff eff.’

I love the way the sea swooshes like a bride’s dress.

I kissed you on the darkened steps of the Cathedral. You looked like Jesus with your long hair, so we kissed in the doorway of the church like we were on your daddy’s front porch. I licked your teeth with a sacrilegious tongue and you touched my breast. On top of my shirt. You were shy in your passion.

I see the sadness of the world in you, my love. Your head hangs, like your shirt collar’s made of lead. Your hair smells of sad. Your fingers feel the table cloth as if sad words were embossed on its surface like braille. Your feet are still, as if their restless tapping would be too joyful a noise. You breathe quietly, as if the air should not be yours if it can’t be hers.

You touch my hand. Your touch is so familiar now. Your kiss is so familiar. You’ve seen the breast you touched so shyly a thousand times, a million times. My belly is stretched silver now, my love. Choose me and get what you deserve. You with your fool’s head, and your silver-bellied wife.

Some there be that shadows kiss,
Such have but a shadow’s bliss:
There be fools alive, iwis,
Silver’d o’er; and so was this.
Take what wife you will to bed,
I will ever be your head.

(The Merchant of Venice II.iv)

Are we fools or shadows? At least a fool is wise and colourful. Our love is so pale now. Your face is pale. Your hand is pale. Your chest is pale in the dark of our bed. My cheeks still blush at pale compliments. My blood still runs hot in the cool of the night, in the pale moonlight.

I’m scared, my love. I’m scared.