Departing

Remember, I'm going to be away for a few days starting tomorrow. So if I don't come in to post something, it's not proof that I've slit my wrists. Honest.

This is a poem I wrote for my very treasured friend, Charlene, back in April. I can't imagine anything more appropriate to leave you with while she and I meet for the first time and celebrate a friendship that we both owe to none other than Jake Gyllenhaal.




What does love mean?
Who decides when it's love
and when it's something else?

Can you tell me it's not love
just because I've never met him,
never had a conversation,
never stood in his presence?

Because I can't touch him,
can't hold him,
can't comfort him when things overwhelm?

Because I've never watched him walk away
and wondered if he'd ever come back?

Does love have qualifications?

Don't speak these other words to me--
infatuation, idolization, fandom, lust!
--and condescend to tell me that they describe what I feel

My love is as real as any other
A living, hoping, screaming thing

You cannot squeeze my feelings into one of your neatly labeled boxes just to make yourself feel better

So you, who say I do not love:
can you say to me that you do?
And how does it feel?

Do you think about him at the most random moments
(what funny thing would he say about this? or
I wonder if he's happy right now)?

Do you cry, and laugh, and sigh for him?

Do you wish him all the joys, big and small, that life may hold?

Do you marvel at the beauty of the human being he is?

Love and reason are strangers to each other
Rationality and emotion, only passing acquaintances

And all this pain,
and craziness,
and euphoria
that propels me through my waking hours
However irrational, however unreasonable
However misunderstood and derided by you
Is as precious to me as any secret
and as real as any truth

This is my heart
and it loves

Photo: IHJ.