THIS IS LOVE

To draw a sharp breath at the sight of one you’ve never seen before…

 

This is Love.

 

To long for her to look at you, to come round the table and sit with you, to talk to you and find your stories amusing; and when the night ends, to hold these words in your heart though you dare not say them out, ‘Don’t leave…’

 

This is Love.

 

To touch the phone, with beating heart, and wonder if you should call. Or not.

 

This is Love.

 

To call with bated breath, and find a conversation so deep it never ends, with a life of its own, that takes you through places strange and yet so familiar; to fall asleep involuntarily because, on a night like this, you want to stay awake forever…

 

This is Love.

 

To steal a first kiss on a frozen night, and laugh the drunken laughter of the smitten, to walk with hands entwined, afraid to let go; to see the world with new eyes and swoon at the scent of endless possibilities…

 

This is Love.

 

To accept. To be accepted.

Not for where you live or what you drive.

 

This is Love.

 

To share the same conviction; that life will not break this bond, rough seas will not weaken this resolve, and where it is tested – on afternoons of trembling walls when the practicalities of living together punches holes in all your fairy-tales – to hold steady, to stay strong, to reach for those immortal words of healing and reconciliation: ‘I’m sorry, baby…’

 

This is Love.

 

To watch your children born…

 

This is Love.

 

To feel the weight of Time, the way it covers everything with dust and dulls the cutting edge of passion; to feel this weight with sorrow; to wake up in the early hours of the morning and worry about it, to pause in the mid-afternoon rush and worry about it, to come home in the evening and worry, that the routine of washing and feeding babies is chipping away at what you have; to stay awake at night, with only the glow of the side-lamp, and talk about it, to argue about it, and cry about it, then hold hands and say about it: ‘No. No! We will not let this happen to us…’

 

This is Love.

 

To find yourselves every time you lose yourselves…

 

To catch it just before you say it

That thing you could never take back

And where it is said, inadvertently, to you

A second later, to forget it

 

This is Love.

 

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