Tide Rising When Love Is

There is a wonderful website, onekindwordproject.org, that I visited after seeing a notice about it in a local cafe. Intrigued by the idea of writing about love, the website's mission, I penned prose about my greatest romance (with a certain tall and handsome husband who washes dishes in the next room as I write) and was absolutely shocked when my work was accepted and posted. You can find my words by searching the site for the date on which it was posted April 29, 2011 or by searching for the title of my work "Tide Rising When Love Is" or by visiting the anthology submissions page here: http://www.onekindwordproject.org/category/anthology-submissions//. I am still, at least for a while, on the top of the page. Some readers, thanks to Facebook, found me there already. I encourage you to visit this website and peruse its pages.

And of course, you can read it here:

He said, tell me about love. And love is what I said, smiling with the jut of chin and shoulder before tumbling with him into the sacred oblivion of white bedclothes and down pillows. The encircling draw of his arms and the rhythmic rise of his chest above mine, the pushing and pulling in a river of warm, blissfully I swam and I sank. Yes, I breathed as I listened to his body, love simply is.

Another day, my heart sandwiched between the pleadings of small children, the dancing of the hungry dog, and the peeling of paint from the walls, my love wasn’t is, but instead had a whole constrained definition. Confined between their needs and his work and my shortcomings, love was an obligation. And then the day passed, and a night, and another day. And that night, love just was again. Love was sighs, the creak of bedsprings, and the sudden pooling of too-warm covers between the bottoms of our feet and the end of the bed. The house slept, our secret adoration in a sweet tide of us rising and filling it. Love just was. And the morning came, with it enough sustenance to counter his woes, discussions of expenses, and diatribes about former lives.

Blink

pour me a drink

and let’s forget about all of this but love, please

the rolling, returning flight of love

In love we are the only ones despite the thousands upon millions of Helens, Juliettes, and Cleopatras, only we have much better endings. Our grandparents, hands clasped in old age or death, were once even us. Oh, but for that millisecond of time in which we are love, loving, and loved.

Shh, let me hush the bleating child. The paint still will flake. I see in your eyes, my sweet, the cotton of warm sheets, the beating of your heart, and the spin of your sea.